LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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(II|3p Qcptingy '^n. 

Shelf Ml\3 F^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE FLUTE-PLAYER 

AND OTHER POEMS 

BY FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS 



^ 






l?<^h-z^ 



/ 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
The Knickerbocker Press 



\-=^ 



^^x 






Copyright, 1894 

BY 

FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 

By G. p. Putnam's Sons 



Printed and Bound by 

Ube Iknichcrbocher iprees, mew ISorh 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 



CONTENTS. 















PAGE 


The Flute-Player i 


To Beauty : An Ode . 












9 


The Inner Vision 












■ 13 


Rizzio .... 












19 


Woman o' the- Watch 












24 


Magdalene 












37 


The Wood Robin 












41 


Servus Servorum Dei 












43 


The Sea 












46 


An Answer . 












47 


Ars Loquitur 












48 


Winter Rain 












49 


Ph^dra 












51 


An Ionian Frieze 












52 


A Dreamer 












53 


Compensation 












55 


Ave America : An Ode 












57 



Sonnets. 

Uncrowned 67 

Karma 68 

Earth and Night 69 

Sic Itur ad Astra 70 

An Early-April Morning 71 

Finis Coronat Opus 72 

Electra 73 

Bedtime 74 

Decoration Day 75 

A Sonnet of Silence 76 

iii 



iv Contents. 

Victor Hugo (May 22, 1885) . 
Walt Whitman, (May 31, 1886) . 
Walt Whitman, (March 26, 1892) 
To John Keats .... 
To Herbert .Spencer . 

An Idle Day : A Sequence of Sonnets. 
I. Salve 

IT Heart of the Night 
III. Promise of Dawn 
IV. Daybreak in the Woods 
V. A Woodland Poet . 
VI. The Farmyard 
VII. Blended Voices 
VIII. Clover . 
IX. Whispers OF the Corn 

X. Mid-Morn 
XI. A Way-side Spring . 
XII. Half Way to Arcady 

XIII. A Wild Rose 

XIV. Roadway Dust 
XV. Wheat Billows 

XVI. Remembrance 
XVII. Aspiration 
XVIII. Cloud-Magic 
XIX. The Brook 
XX. The Twilights 
XXI. Perspective 
XXII. Fantasy . 

XXIII. Nocturne 

XXIV. Vale 



77 

78 

79 
80 
81 



85 
86 

87 



90 

91 
92 

93 
94 

95 
96 

97 

98 

99 

100 

lOI 

102 
103 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 



A Primrose Path 
Between 
Cradle Song 
Caprice 
A Serenade . 



Songs and Trifles. 



Ill 
112 
114 
"5 



Contejits. 



A Primrose Path : Songs and Trifles. 


fCofi 


t.) 




Love Came TO Me ii6 


Flower o' the Sea 








117 


Marguerite 








119 


The Way o' the World 








120 


Philosophy-in-Little 








121 


Cupid and Justice 








122 


A Rondeau of Vassar 








123 


Evolution of the Poet 








124 


Ballade to a Bookman 








124 


A Rondeau in Reply . 








125 


Ballade .... 








126 


Rondeau .... 








127 



Acknowledgments are due to the Publishers of J'he Atlantic Monthly, 
Harpet-' s Weekly, Lippincott^ s Magazine, The hidependent, and other 
periodicals, for permission to reprint in this volume certain pieces of verse 
which originally appeared in the pages under their control. 



THE FLUTE-PLAYER. 



'T^HRICE a score of candles, flaring, ah bravely flare 
^ Fashion shadows on the wall, fetafhaii''^ ""' 

While the loftier lights are glaring piay"s"be''gin 
Over all the festival ; the symphony. 



With a visage melancholy 
Meditates the dark Bassoon, 

Glows the 'Cello's face as jolly 
As a yellow harvest-moon. 

Lean the Oboe and eager. 
With a sharp, uplifted chin ; 

Bald and red, and seeming meagre 
In his brains, the first Violin ; 



And albeit each 
one thinketh 
but of his own 
part, yet the 
wholeness of the 
symphony suf- 
fereth no mar- 
ring thereby ; 



For, of a truth, it 
is here as with 
the music of 
humanity, to the 
which tho' all 
must contribute, 
many an one 
furnisheth a 



note that is but a discord to that of his fellow. 



But the Flute with shoulders bended 
And his scantly silvered head, — 

Ah ! what present joys are blended 
With the sorrows that are fled. 



And one player 

thinketh but of 

being done with 

as small pain as 

may be, and 

another reckon- 

eth how he shall 

expend the wage 

of his labor in rioting and wantonness. 



Why, tho' haply he remembers 
Vanished gleams of Paradise, 



The Flute-Player. 



But the Flute- 
Player, who 
sitteth well 
stricken in 
years, seemeth 
to have learned 
somewhat of the 
secret of life, 
even as a soul 
that hath found 
Truth in the 
sweet shows of 
Nature. So that 
no sooner hath 
the music begun, 
than he seeth, 
as it were by the 
inner eye of the 
spirit, himself a 
lad. 



Glow love's unextinguished embers 
Deeply in his faded eyes ? 

Strange that songs forever borrow 
From the past their sweetest lay ! 

Strange that every silver morrow 
Has a golden yesterday ! 

Strange ! the flutist, bowed and 
slender, 

Marks no more the baton's lead, 
As he breathes a message tender 

Thro' his mild and mellow reed. 



And the gay 
Allegro 
quickeneth his 
pulses. 



For the player in his dreaming 
Sees himself again a boy, 

Finding real all the seeming 
Of life's sudden cup of joy ; 



And full soon 
he groweth 
'ware of the 
touch of man- 
hood. 



Hears the fretted music ringing 
Down the corridors of art, 

Hears love's voice eternal singing 
Thro' the chambers of his heart ; 



For his sweet-o'- 
heart cometh 
tripping adown 
a green country 
lane. 



Feels a touch of tenderest meaning 
Steal into his soul again. 

As a maid o'er April greening 
Saunters down a country lane ; 



TJic Flntc-Playcr. 



There is nothing to dissemble, 
Naught to fear in love's behest, 

Where the violets lie a-tremble 
In the heaven of her breast. 



And lo ! she is 
very fair to look 
on, and her 
gentle seeming 
IS as a balsam 
to his eyes. 



Is it but the morning's blessing 
That the maiden looks so fair ? 

Is it but the warm caressing 
Of the sunlight in her hair ? 



The Player 
dallyeth with 
the vision. 



(Suddenly a dulcet blending 
Of the strings and oboe 

Marks the gay allegro's ending 
In a flood of harmony. 



Then Cometh a 
change in the 
measure and he 
awakeneth all 
regretful 
thereof. 



Then in slow and solemn number ^"dy Ada^o 
The adagio begins, "'°°^'^' ^^MT' 

o o > again to dream. 

Fraught with harmonies that cumberA"'^ ''^^ 

° svmDhor 

Gloriously the violins.) 



Haply some melodious motion, 
Born of music's eloquence, 

Lulls to slumber like a potion 
Ravishing the spirit's sense ; 

For again the old Flute-Player 
Dreams away o'er land and sea, 

Idle as a sunburnt strayer 
In the fields of Arcady. 



symphony goeth 
well, and 
forasmuch as all 
the players obey 
the wand of him 
who leadeth, the 
end thereof is 
Beauty ; 
for verily 
Obedience is 
the gate to 
Knowledge, and 
Knowledge is 
Truth, and 
Truth is Beauty, 



The Flute-Player. 



Yet the players 
are sordid, 
being but blind 
followers, 
wedded each to 
his own husks. 



There, within his vision standing, 
Smiles the love of all his life. 

Like a maiden bud expanding 
To the flower he calls his wife. 



And the stately, cadenced measure 

Of the rich adagio, 
Woven thro' remembered pleasure, 

Woofed of half-forgotten woe. 



And betimes 
the aged 
Flute-Player 
seeth his 
sweet-o'-heart ; 



Comes with wisdom of the ages 
Pulsing in its ebb and flow. 

Laden with the lore of sages 
From the land of Long-Ago. 



Now become 
his good-wife. 



And a cottage in the sunlight 
Sheds the glory of the sun, 

Wherein magic, from his one light. 
Many lights of love has won ; 



And he heareth 
the babble of 
children in the 
glow of the 
ingle. 



For the low voice of a woman, 
Children's laughter, merry cries. 

Come in tones divinely human 
From an earthly Paradise. 



And ere he well 
knoweth, the 
time hath pas't 
to the ripe o' the 
year, and 
middle-age hath 
come. 



" Well I love them ! " in a broken 
Whisper 'neath the murmurous trees; 

" Well I love them ! " partly spoken 
Thro' the sympathetic keys. 



The Flute-Playcr. 



5 



" Is it better pain and pleasure 
To remember or forget ? 
Is it—? Ah! they change the measure;""!'^ changeth 

-' ° 'to the stately 



And lo ! he 
starteth as the 
measure of the 



This is sure the minuet ! " 



Minuet. 



And the player all sedately 

Scans his notes with eyesight worn 
While the movement lapses stately 

As a breeze among the corn, 

Till the tones a subtler meaning 
Garner from the vanished years, 

O'er life's fields of harvest gleaning 
Aftermath of many tears. 

Fleet before him evanescent 
Seasons thro* their courses run, 

Light as dewdrops iridescent 
In the laughter of the sun ; 



Again the 
pageant of his 
dreams ariseth 
before him, and 
time, which ever 
hasteth apace, 
hath silvered 
o'er his hair, 
and corded his 
faded hands 
with great veins, 
and dulled the 
lustre of his 
eyes. 



And the robin of the ring-time 
Learns to pipe a lovelier tune ; 

And the bride of early springtime 
Is the aweeter wife of June. 



Comes the warm, sun-soaked Septem- 
ber, 

Life's wine red upon the lees ; 
Comes the rimy-lipped November, 

Children's children at his knees. 



And it pleaseth 
him well to 
fancy that 't is 
the laughter 
of his 
grandchildren 



The Flutc-Plnycr. 



and their right 
merry pother 
that come unto 
him from the 
bars of the 
lively Scherzo. 



Onward, ever onward speeding, 
What is this the old man sees ? 

'T is the baton deftly leading 
Thro' the scherzo's harmonies. 



Suddenly in tones supernal, 

Earthward borne in lordlier rhyme, 



Mayhap his 
dream hath put 

of re'iity!'"""'' Comcs the boom of waves eternal, 



Breaking on the sands of time. 



For lo ! the 
lights fade, and 
from his ears the 
sound of the 
instruments 
dieth away. 



Whence the rapture in the gazing 
Of the aged flutist's eyes ? 

Whence the tenderness amazing 
In the wedded harmonies ? 



He seeth no 
more the wand 
of the leader. 



Why should he, thro' every turning 
Of the mellow symphony, 

Play his single part, then spurning 
All control, seem but to be 



The clouds roll 
asunder and 
there conieth a 
Divine beckon- 
ing from the 
firmament. 



Fluting fast and ever faster 

Thro' the music's crowded bars, 

Led by a celestial master 

Beating time among the stars ? 



The Flute- 
Player's ears 
are ravish't with 
vast harmonies 
ineffable. 



Ah ! he hears a cadence woven, 
As a thread of song might be, 

By a more divine Beethoven 
Thro' a mightier symphony. 



The Flute-Player. 



In his fading eyes the story 
Of a life is written fair ; 

O'er his brow a summer glory 
Warms the winter in his hair. 

And as down remembered valleys 
Love and youth together stroll, 

Thro' the flute's mellifluent alleys 
He is breathing out his soul. 



And he breath- 
eth a strange 
melody through 
his flute. 
The tones grow 
celestial, for lo ! 
the Flute-Player 
is uttering his 
soul, and it pass- 
eth out divinely. 



Struck with sudden admiration, And all the 

Falls the leader's nerveless hand ; dumb, being 

^ . r J- • 1 ^- wrought upon 

Conscious of divine elation, by a deep awe ; 

All the men in wonder stand ; 



In their eyes strange fires are burning ; 

Each melodic voice is mute. 
Save the pure impassioned yearning 

Of the liquid-throated flute. 

Every movement has been rendered 
Sanctified from days of yore, 

All the instruments have tendered 
Reverence to the glorious score. 

All have mingled in the heaven 
Born of wedded tone and tone ; 

The finale must be given 
By the soulful flute alone. 



But the flute 
continueth. 



It is the Finale. 



And, of a truth, 
may we not say 
th.<t 't is even so 
in all of life ? 
For albeit many 
tones be blended 
in harmony and 
discord, yet 't is 
the pleading of 
the single voice 
that reacheth to 
the everlasting 
ears. 



The Flntc-Playcr. 



Many men shall 
mingle in the 
world, but 't is 
the naked soul 
which must 
come alone to 
the altar-steps 
of God. 



Ay, the symphony, tho' blended 
In accordance loud and long. 

Sinks at last, when all is ended. 
To the pleading of a song. 



Still the candles, weirdly flaring, 
Fashion shadows on the wall, 

Still the loftier lights are glaring 
Over all the festival. 



The fluting 
dieth into 
silence. 



Hark ! Is this a sigh or singing 
Dying on the listening air ? 

'T is the flute's voice, upward winginj 
Like a music-laden prayer. 



The dead fingers 
lie, loving.across 
the keys. 



The symphony 
is finish't, but 
its last chords 
havebeen sound- 
ed beyond the 
stars. 

'T is only the 
Flute-Player 
who hath heard 
the final 
harmony. 



And a hush in benediction 
O'er the bended man is shed ; 

Death that glorifies affliction 
Wreathes an aureole 'round 
head. 

And his fingers still are pressing 
Voiceless keys with loving art. 

Still the silent flute caressing 
On the silence of his heart. 



his 



TO BEAUTY: AN ODE. 



T^HERE comes a sure uplifting of the soul ; 

Forth leaps a light late shadowed in eclipse ; 
Before my seeking gaze the vapors roll 

Backward, and bursts the new apocalypse ! 
In this large moment, Spirit of Beauty, thou 
That dost possess me with thy loveliness, 
I am elate to feel thee, know thee mine, 
To wrap my being in the sense of joy 
Which is thy being, till thou dost endow 
My soul with love heroic and the stress 
Of high endeavor. Life hath no alloy, 
So touched upon by thee, but grows divine 
In potency of action, power of nobleness. 



An hour of youth that dreams of no hereafter, 
A day of toil amid encircling fears. 

The comradeship of human loves and laughter, 
The sanctifying grace of human tears ; 

A weary waiting through the years that cumber, 
A weary sowing that the world may reap, 
9 



10 To Beauty : An Ode. 

A silent drooping of the head to slumber, 

A silent closing of the eyes to sleep. 
And this is life, which thy fair ministries 

Have made to me a dream of solemn joys, — 
In candid sunlight, with the somnolent bees, 
In glorious glooms of forest sacristies. 

In green recesses where the fret and noise 
Of the defeated, despicable world 

Come not to break the bliss of solitude. 
Ah ! beacon hurled 

From God's hand into trackless nights of 

mind. 
By thy fair light I find 
The hidden flaws of the philosophies, — 

The nerveless food 
Of earth-bred natures barren of the skies. 

III. 

What time the Spring had wantoned with the trees 
And wrought a pallor over Arcady, 
Thou camest to me robed as one might be 
Who ministered to Love's high revelries. 
And didst uplift me with thy starry eyes. 
Till I, divine in thy divinity. 
Encompassed heaven in being loved of thee, 
And drew from Paradise 

Delight to a sad world all rapturously. 
To touch thy hair the sun had quit the skies ; 
And joy upon thy brow had fallen on sleep, 
Being surfeited with sweets which still did keep 
The portals of thy uncompanioned lips ; 



To Beauty : A h Ode. 1 1 

And in the woven cadence of thy sighs 

I heard Love's song wherethrough light 

laughter slips, — 
Life's undertone that cannot choose but weep. 
And I spread wide my arms, but thou wert gone ; 
Naught left but memory's mocking counterpart, — 

The wafted fragrance of thy outblown hair. 
Subtle as odors of the Summer's heart ; 

And in the lambent and unpeopled air 
A vision fading as a dream at dawn. 



Is it but Fancy that doth sometimes cheat 
Our wayward pulses into quietude, — 
A stern necessity of joy, a mood 
Begotten of much yearning upon thee. 

Spirit that bearest wings upon thy feet 

And laurel on thy white unageing brows, — 
Spirit of streams and woodland minstrelsy 
And Art's high heritage that with faith endows 

Lives else all incomplete ? 

I only know thou dost vouchsafe delight, 
Born of the morning and the sweet-breath'd 
night 

And silent hills that lift their fronts to woo 
The upper air's yet deeper silences, 
The while the thoughtful twilight hovers nigh 

To stay the fretting of the leaves, as who 
Should murmur : " Peace a little, it is I," 
And ever in profounder whispers, " Peace " ; 



1 2 To Beauty : A n Ode. 

The pale light fading from clear winnowed skies 

As fleeting colors from the face of Fear ; 
A bird-song that releases rhapsodies, 
And dies into the lucent solitude 
With such divine decadence, that I hear 
Remembered music in an interlude 
Of visions alien grown to un remembering eyes. 



And I shall never lose thee ; thou dost keep 
Tryst with my soul. 
In patins wrought of daisies on the meads. 
In violets lifting scented lips to God, 
Haply in songs that flood the aisles of sleep, 
Upon the fretting of unceasing needs 
I feel the soothing and the sure control 
Of thy cool fingers. In each greening sod 
Is written thy evangel, and the ways 
Thy feet have trod 
Are redolent of all fair flowers that are, 

While in thy deep commemorative gaze 
Peace lingers like an upward-pointing star. 



THE INNER VISION. 

A^^HERE the sky in sleep and silence dreams 

away the drowsy days, 
And the sunlit spaces shimmer in the films of 

golden haze, 
Great Antonio, he of Spezzia, slowly thro' the 

seasons wrought. 
Striving ever to embody that which his profounder 

thought '-^ 

Found elusive as a perfume, or the melody that 

dwells 
(Heard thro' misty miles of distance,) in the pulses 

of the bells ; 
^ Till at last the storied canvas in triumphant colors 

bore, 
Perfect as a strain of music 'prisoned thus forever- 
more, 
One fair form enfolded in the rare celestial light 

it wore. 

Here, where fountains lightly lisp of love to roses 

leaning low, 
Staunch in friendship, dwelt the kinsmen Valentine 

and Angelo ; 
Valentine was brave and brawny, hot the blood 

within his veins ; 

13 



14 TJie Inner Vision. 

His the strength to show compassion to the weak- 
ness it disdains ; 

His the supple nerve and sinew, and the step which 
Hghtly trod ; 

His the shoulders of a hero and the temples of a 
god. 

But for Angelo the thoughtful, dreaming ever of a 
goal. 

Where eternal wreaths of laurel wait to crown the 
victor soul, 

J.ife was but the budding promise of a later, fairer 
flower ; 

Joy the prelude to an anthem ; love the folly of 
an hour ; 

Pride of strength the badge of weakness ; gentle- 
ness the test of power. 

So when wide the fame was bruited of Antonio's 

matchless skill, 
And the finished picture proved the triumph of 

creative will, 
These two, singly, looked upon its tender curve 

and living line, 
Gloried in its wealth of color, recognized the 

touch divine, 
Saw and loved and praised it, each to other, with 

unstinted breath. 
Saying, " 'T is a thing immortal, Tonio was not 

made for death ! " 
And as Valentine enkindled with the beauty and 

the grace 



The Inner Vision. 1 5 

Of the masterful creation, stirred his life to quicker 

pace, 
And the wild blood, in its flood-tide, painted 

passion on his face. 

"Ah!" he sighed, ''what deeper rapture, in a 

world grown gray with prayer, 
Than to lose one's sense of being in the perfume of 

her hair ; 
In one mad transcendent moment, — " Quick, Avith 

hand uplifted high, 
" Hold ! " cried Angelo in pallor, "Stay thy word 

of blasphemy ! 
By Our Lady's gracious presence," (here he crossed 

himself in haste) 
" Thou, tho' more than friend or brother, shalt not 

find mine ear debased 
To the level of thy lewdness. Hath some Circe 

turned us swine ? 
Is the world with dregs so drunken that it cannot 

taste the wine ? " 
Then, hot flaming in his anger, "Thou art mad," 

quoth Valentine ; 
" Mad the word and mad the gesture ; thou hast 

o'er thy parchments bent 
Till thy blood hath lost true color and thy flame of 

life is spent ; 
Thou wouldst preach a stern evangel as our 

holiest heritage, — 
On youth's fair unruffled forefront write the mes- 
sages of age. 



1 6 The Inner Vision. 

Is it sin to worship Beauty wheresoe'er its shrine 

may be ? 
Is it shame to wed the pulses of a wide humanity ? 
Thou, mayhap, canst chant a paean to the joys of 

dead desire, 
Since no Circe hath debased thee till thou darest to 

admire 
Fair and fatal Aphrodite, born of Foam and bred 

of Fire ! " 

" What ! " spake Angelo, uprising, " Aphrodite ! 

Heaven be kind ! 
Nay, 't is thou art mad of surety ; overfeeding dulls 

thy mind ; 
'T is Antonio's chiefest glory that his work bespeaks 

his heart ; 
He ne'er found in pagan harlots lips to lure the 

kiss of Art. 
That fair form upon his canvas is our Blessed 

Lady, she 
More divine for being human, earthlier for divinity. 
In the false pride of thy power, thou hast scorned 

to kiss the rod ; 
Thou hast dared to flaunt thine offal in the very 

face of God ! 
But enough ! Words fall to folly ; test of truth 

alone is wise ; 
'T is the master who shall tell us whether in those 

radiant eyes 
Gleams the fire of wanton Venus or the Virgin's 

Paradise." 



TJic Inner Vision. \J 

So they strode with eager footsteps to the cool 
pavilion where 

Sat Antonio, grave, and aureoled in a wealth of 
wintered hair ; — 

Put before him all the quarrel which so deep their 
souls had stirred ; 

Vehemently questioned, then awaited his decisive 
word. 

As they ceased the master slowly lifted his pro- 
phetic eyes, 

While a smile, half hid, betokened more of sadness 
than surprise : 

"Ye, my sons, have yet to learn the deepest, 
holiest truth in art ; 

Kach beholder sees before him only that which 
fills his heart ; 

Eyes anointed by the spirit's finer touch to nobler 
sight 

Ever catch the dawn of angel faces through Cim- 
merian night ; 

But to him whose soul is fettered in the meshes of 
desire 

Saints are satyrs tho' the artist dip his brush in 
living fire. 

Thou, oh Angelo, hast pondered long on visions 
heavenly fair, 

Till the beautiful Madonna smiles upon thee every- 
where ; 

But for thee^ my strong-thewed, lusty Valentine, 
with heart of flame. 



1 8 TJic Inner Vision. 

Thy luxurious Venus tempts thee till thy lips pro* 

nounce her name. 
For the answer to your question, know, my sons, 

ye both are wrong. 
All the beauties on my canvas to humanity belong ; 
Through the weary years I labored, seeking a 

celestial sign, 
Then I painted simply Woman, finding nothing 

more divine." 
Here Antonio paused. In silence, heart to heart, 

and hand to hand, 
Stood the friends with lowered eyelids, humbler 

each to understand ; 
And their chastened ears grew conscious of the 

callings of the sea. 
Lighter than the lambent rumor of the wind across 

the lea, — 
Softer than the sunlight sleeping on the slopes of 

A ready. 



RIZZIO. 

(a fragment.) 

HoLYROOD, March 9, 1566. A banquet table 
in disorder. At back, the Countess of Argyle, 
swooning in her chair. Grouped apart, their swords 
red with the blood of Rizzio, stand the lords 
Darnley, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, and George 
Douglass. Seated near the centre is Mary Stuart, 
leaning despairingly upon the table, her face buried 
in her hands. Rizzio, wounded unto death, is at 
her feet, clinging to her girdle and striving to reach 
her face. 

Rizzio. 

O EE how they stand apart, these lords, whose 

hands 
Have bungled i' the work, else had their points 
Made me a cleaner exit. They mayhap. 
Granting short shrift, would yet bestow a balm 
To soothe the pang and poison of the end. 
My Queen ! thy throat is stung to sudden flowers, 
Tinct with strange colors new begot of love ; 
May I not kiss thee on the mouth and eyes. 
Seeing how sternly this gaunt foe denies 
All quarter to the vanquished ? 
19 



20 Rizzio. 

Let me hear 
The old, quick breathing, breaking to desire, 
To lull the sense and turn the pulses mad, 
I am a penitent ; ah, gracious Love, 
Be thou my rosary, and let me tell 
My sins upon thy perfectness ; as here. 
Where shadows make a twilight of thy hair, 
I 've dared to feel myself a very god. 
Or here, renascent in thy eyes, have dreamed 
That no diviner beacon burns in heaven. 
O ! little mouth, half rounded to a song, — 
Swift shuddering with an indrawn lisp of love, 
My soul hath lost itself to compass thee 
And rues no whit the barter. 



Mary, 



Prithee peace 



rrii 
For God's love turn thy gaze to heaven. 

Rizzio. 

And so 
Gaze still, my Queen, on thee. 

Nay, nay, fear not 
The poisoned chalice destined to my lips 
Is sweeter that I drain it at thy feet. 
Ah ! the wounds rankle ! It will not be long. 
For see how gorgeous the cold stone hath grown 
In colors of my life 



Rizzio. 2 1 

Mary. 

Mother of pain ! 
Be thou compassionate 

Rizzio. 

There were no need 
To pray compassion did God please to grant 
But one hour longer ; but the ebb hath set 
Strong on the scarlet sea. 

Cease weeping, Sweet, 
Libations such as this become divine 
In being offered. 

Mary. 

Ay. But on the same 
Sad altar of my heart I lay a heart's 
Petition. I, who brought a song from France, 
Have heard but thunder from these Scottish hills. 
And for the cates and dainties of delight 
Have been made drunk with blood. 

Sweet Heaven, hear 
A prayer for justice, and endow the arm 
Of him whose life is yet a part of mine 
With puissance to right a hideous wrong. 

Rizzio. 
Nay, nay ; leave justice ; I would speak of love. 



22 Rizzio. 

Mary. 

And love is justice. 

Ah, poor clammy brows ! 
And kindly eyes that I have found so fair ! 
Would God a queen were not so poor a thing, 
Beggared of easement to a friend . 

Rizzio. 

But stoop 
A little nearer till I feel thee through, 
And catch life's light distilment spent like wine 
Upon the lip's curve. So ! thine eyes are fires. 
Quenched and relighted where the drooping lids 
Turn gold to umber. Ah, yet nearer, Sweet ; 
My lips are hot, but soon shall wed wet clay. 
And grow less passionate when my mouth is filled 
With pitiless earth. 

Methinks, in faith, to ask 
A hearing loverwise were little now, 
For that the warmth of my embrace falls off 
In touching Death. 

Mary. 

Nay, I am here, look up ; 
Start not so wild ! 

Rizzio {brokenly). 

The fragrance of thy breath 
Fades to the faint remembrance of a joy 
Too fine to linger. 



Rizzio. 23 

Prithee, — speak more close, — 
My ears are strangely dull, — and yet, — and yet 
I hear the wrack of bursting worlds ! 

More close, — 
God ! I am blind. — More close, — and guide my 

hands 
To find again thy face. 

Ah, Heart of mine ! 
Death is so potent ! — It is very dark, — 
Night hath no stars. — 

I drain this stirrup-cup 
For love — and for the Queen ! 

(He clings to Mary's knees, and then rolls over 
upon the floor. George Douglass snatches Darn ley's 
dagger, and, reaching across Mary's lap, drives it 
into the dead body of Rizzio.) 

Douglass. 

This for the Kins ■' 



WOMAN-O'-THE-WATCH. 



A SLOPING stretch of beach that bore away 
Monotonously northward, while beyond, 
Across the glintings of a little bay 
Indented in the coast-line, lay more beach 
That feathered off to mist and lost itself 
In indistinguishable haze of sand and sky. 
Nearer, a reef that ever at low tide 
Rose with bared head and looked askance to land 
Like some poltroon detected in a lie ; 
While over all there hung the neutral tints 
Of a cool sea-sky, cumbered at its edge 
With masses of gray cloud, and flecked across, 
Nearer the zenith, with pale nimbus strips 
That scudded to the South before the wind. 
A path ran backward from the beach's edge, 
Beginning at the place where the scant sedge 
Made a path's presence visible, and thence, 
Leading o'er bits of firmer ground, it wound 
With indirect directness to the mill, — 
The mill, a crazy tower with arms atop. 
That caught a fragment of the untamed wind 
And chained it to the bidding of the town. 
Half a mile back the streaks of south-blown smoke, 
24 



Woman-0 tJic-Watch. 25 

Which left the cottage chimneys palely blue, 
Whitened and faded, and in fading formed 
The dim horizon's dusk. 

Below, the shore 
Grew bolder, and a little wharf was built, 
Littered with anchors, nets, and half worn ropes, 
And quaint, mysterious masses of hard hemp 
Smelling of tar and salt. A sloop there was 
That rode with lazy motion on the swell 
And curtsied to the strand, while fishing-boats, 
Bearing bright-blazoned titles 'thwart the sterns, 
Bespoke the occupation of the town. 

Now the slant shadows of the dipping masts 
Tapered to spar-like spindles, long and lean 
As nodding needles, for the day declined 
And the flat-falling, low-reclining rays 
Told that the time lacked but a transient hour 
Of sunset. 

Hence it was that silent steps 
Which lately lingered on the yielding sand 
Grew quicker, — steps of two whose threads of life 
Seemed confluent : one a man with sun-browned 

face, 
Broad shouldered, heavy limbed ; not lacking 

grace. 
Yet of all grace unconscious ; such an one 
As years of sea life might be looked to make : 
The other a slight girl, with form as lithe 
As willow, and her hair as full of lights 
And deepening shadows as a forest stream. 
And these two seemed intent on their one theme, 



26 Woman-d-t he-Watch. 

Unmindful of all else without the world 
Which held their love, for they were to be wed 
— God willing — on the morning of the day 
Which brought another week, and even now 
The man (Edward she called him) whispered low 
Sweet sentences of what the future held, 
— A waiting treasure-trove of untold joys, — 
To fill her soul and his. So long, indeed, 
Upon the unrestful bosom of the deep 
He like a waif had wandered, that the thought 
Of home and hearth and her he loved, — all his, — 
Of tidy curtains drawn to half conceal 
The Paradise within from him who stood 
Without, perhaps the glow and hallowed light 
Of childish faces pressed against the pane. 
Seemed like a long-sought haven of repose 
To over-weary hearts. 

Such pictures now 
He drew, while she, with quickening tumult filled, 
Drank in his words and dared not lift her eyes 
Lest, lifted, they betrayed more light of love 
Than heart had faith to utter. Then he laughed 
And said : " It is not long — to-night I go 
To gather store will ease the coming hours 
Of our sweet honeymoon ; but I shall come 
To thee again on Thursday, — mark the time, — 
On Thursday ere the sun begin to sink." 
And full of happy hopes of that near day, 
He sang in undertones an old love song, 
Tender and quaint, sea-savoured, and withal 
Melodious : 



Woman-d -the- WatcJi. 27 

My love, my love, the tide is flowing 

And slipping under our polished keel ; 
My love, my love, the breeze is blowing. 
And over the waves the red sun glowing 
Tips the spars as they rock and reel. 

But tide may flow, 

And breeze may blow. 

Yet love, my love ! 

While Heaven 's above 

I am thine, love, I am thine ! 

Sweetheart, sweetheart, the wind is droning 

And sighing sadly among the shrouds ; 
Sweetheart, sweetheart, the timbers groaning 
Sound i' the air like a spirit moaning 
Under the gray of the angry clouds. 

Let timbers groan, 

And spirits moan. 

But, sweetheart, sweet ! 

Tho' time fly fleet 

Thou art mine, love, thou art mine ! 

And drawing closer that half drooping head 
Till all its burnt gold saddened into brown 
Under his shoulder's shadow, Edward led 
Their steps close to the little wharf, and then. 
Half-playful, half in earnest, drew from out 
His rough sea-jacket's ample inner folds, 
A curious scarf of brilliant-colored stuffs 
Inwoven with much pain of cunning hand 
Into quaint emblems, meaningless or not. 



28 Woman-d -tJie- Watch. 

According to the power of him who sought 

To find a meaning. All the colors, bright 

As painted rainbows on a screen, quick caught 

The eye, and thus had Edward, when he voyaged 

In the last trading trip, seen at a booth 

In some brisk Indian port this gewgaw which 

He bought and carried home to please a whim 

For brilliant hues. Now, drawing forth the scarf, 

He held it to the girl and laughing cried : 

" This be the sign love's duty first shall give 

Of love's own sweet remembrance ; fasten thou 

This, as a flag, upon some bit of staff 

From out the scattered rubbish of the beach. 

And when, heart-hungered, I shall sail near home 

On Thursday, ere the sun begin to sink, 

There, first of all land signals which I see, 

Shall be this emblem fretting in the wind 

And painting all its length against the sky ; 

And so my heart shall gather firmer strength 

To stay its further waiting, and the sign 

Will waft assurance over leagues of air, 

Saying, " Sweetheart, I wait, thy Ethel waits ; 

Oh lover, husband, come ! " And then he turned 

Quickly to catch the blood upon her cheek 

Which that last word had brought, for well he 

knew 
How surely it would bring it, and so leaned 
And kissed her. And, ere either knew, they 

reached 
The wharf. There Edward, once more cautioning : 
" Forget not Thursday, ere the sun go down." 



Woman-0-the- Watch. 29 

And whispering that whereof no man may know, 
Save that it drew a flood of tender light 
Across the violet shadows of her eyes, 
Turned from her and was gone, and Ethel stood 
Still as a statue, looking out to sea, 
The scarf of inwrought emblems in her hand. 
And on her face emblems yet deeper wrought, 
Till clear-cut cordage barred across the sun, 
And he had sailed into the West. 



II. 



Time moves 
With fateful fingers on the dial, and oft 
Resteps in his old footprints ; so I came 
To that same stretch of beach that bore away 
Monotonously northward. Now there stood 
A thriving, bustling town, compactly built 
And cut with streets rectangular, and neat 
As woodbine tacked against a cottage wall. 
Whereon the eye rests, with a wish the while 
To see it tangled and half lost in grass. 
The path that forty years before had led 
With indirect directness to the mill 
Was blotted out and covered o'er with flag. 
And at the place where once the wharf had been 
Arose a ponderous pier, its space o'erpacked 
With merchandise piled in long tiers and placed 
In orderly confusion. Out beyond, 
A goodly show of shipping, taut and trim. 
Spoke of the commerce of the little port, 



30 Woman-d -tJie- Watch. 

And led the eye to wander, as did mine, 

Seeking the farther limits of the view 

Half hid in haze. But soon, as though a spell, 

Wielded by some resistless outer force, 

Had fallen upon me, motionless I gazed 

Upon a single object, wan and weird 

As troubled dreams at dawn. There, in relief. 

Sharp drawn against the background of the sky, 

I saw the figure of a woman, tall. 

But bent as with the weight of added years, 

Stand peering out o'er misty miles of sea. 

As though between the dull red vapor globe 

Which marked the sun's position and herself 

She looked to see some vision of a god 

Float landward with the tide. Her left hand held 

A slender rod, from whose half-splintered top 

Fluttered a rag, flag-fashion, flapping hard 

To rush away upon the gusty wind. 

While with the right she shaded well her brow. 

Nor seemed to know of aught without that space 

Of sea and sky whereon her gaze was set. 

And as I paused, regarding closer yet 

That strange, quaint figure, close to wliere I stood 

There passed a waterman, with slouching gait, 

Who whistled a quick-changing sailor tune, 

Full of queer grace-notes and untuneful trills. 

That broke the current of my thought, and him 

I beckoned, and, as being one who knew 

The local gossip of the port, I begged 

That I might learn who the wan woman was 

That stood so still facing the wind. And he. 



Woman-d-tJic- Watch. 3 1 

Half doubting if the question asked were asked 
In jest or earnest, raised his brows and smiled 
That it were asked at all. 

" I thought," he said, 
"That all who ever came here knew the tale 
Of Woman-o -the- Watch ! Why there she stands 
Where she has stood once every week for more 
Than forty years. I mind me of the times 
When I, a lisping child playing among 
The anchors and the nets, saw that same hand 
Uphold that same split flag-staff, and those eyes 
Look out to sea with that same longing look. 
Master, I think I be full come to years 
Of manhood, and that woman stood as now 
Ere I was born." 

And here he paused, with arm 
Outstretched, pointing his words with gesture. 

Then 
Reflectively, as one who conjured up 
Remembrances of childhood, he went on : 
" I oft have heard my father tell the tale 
How that old Ethel (she who stands there now) 
Once on a time was deemed as fair a lass 
As sailor's heart could pine for, and that when 
One loved her and had won her love as well, 
And they were to be wed, he that she loved 
Had left her to be gone but half a week. 
For he was, like the rest, a fisherman, 
And thought to swell his store by one more trial 
Against their coming marriage. But or e'er 
Two days had marked his going there arose 



32 Woinan-d -the-Watch. 

A tempest such as those whose frosted heads 
First saw the sunlight on this coast had ne'er 
Before beheld — a tempest wild as war 
And pitiless as death. 

" Full well all knew 
No fishing boat could live in such a sea, 
And those whose fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. 
Were out, like stricken deer, rushed up and down, 
Some raving, others praying, and all wild ; 
The women wrung their hands and wept, save one 
(This one before us), who stood cold and white, 
And never spake a word. The long night through 
She seemed like some stone sculpture of despair 
Or terror turned to ice. And when the day 
Broke she was left like some dismantled barque. 
Her eye despoiled of lustre, and across 
Her sweet brow written nothingness. Her wits 
Had gone out in the darkness of that night, 
And naught was left but love. 

" Thus sore bereft, 
She, as it were, became a little child, 
Pleased with a plaything, frightened by a frown ; 
And even as a little child will find 
In the same toy which yesterday beguiled. 
Another toy quite fresh and new to-day. 
To tire of now and want again to-morrow ; 
So Ethel, with all ideas lost save one. 
Because her lover, ere he went away, 
Had bade her look on Thursday for his sail, 
Has kept her curious calendar encased 
Within her heart of heart, forgetful as 



Woinan-o-the- Watch . 3 3 

Each Thursday's sun goes down that Thursday's sun 

Has risen. Thus each week for forty years, 

Like a wan worshipper at a sacred shrine, 

She comes on Thursday ere the sun goes down. 

Unfurling her poor pennon to the breeze 

Upon the pier. She never fails, and so 

The sailors call her Woman- o'-t/ie- Watch. 

That, master, is her story." 

As the man 
Finished, we came quite close to where she stood 
(For we had walked the while he told the tale), 
And I regarded well those far-off eyes. 
Seeking their solemn secret. O'er her face 
There glowed a strange flush, centering in the 

cheeks, 
Which told of lying hope, — hope long deferred 
And feedmg on itself. Her hair, outblown, 
Was nearly white, and all her figure seemed 
But an embodied dream. Then, as the sea 
Brake far adown the shore, — a harmony 
Of fast incoming tides, — I heard her sing. 
In tones so weakened with o'er-freighted days 
The melody seemed drowned in half-spent tears : 

" My love, my love, the tide is flowing 

And slipping under our polished keel ; 
My love, my love, the breeze is blowing. 
And over the waves the red sun glowing 
Tips the spars as they rock and reel. 
But tide may flow, 
And breeze may blow, 



34 Wotnan-o -the- Watch. 

Yet love, my love ! 

While Heaven 's above 

I am thine, love, I am thine ! " 

And I, who watched her closely, saw the light — 
The strange perennial light of those sad eyes — 
Flame dully, as a dying ember flames. 
And half athwart her visage stole a smile 
More pitiful than weeping, and anon 
The eager tension of the muscles drew 
The anxious look into her face again, 
And she was once more peering out to sea 
Silent as stone. But still the restless deep 
In minor chords its requiem rolled abroad, 
And once again she sang : 

" Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, — " 

There the voice broke and faltered for a space. 
As a dim memory of the shipwrecked mind 
Stung the hurt heart to anguish, but ere long 
She seemed upborne by some supernal force 
That stirred the slumbering fires of her soul 
And gave her youth and beauty. Once again 
Erect she stood, her eye far-flashing with 
The light of old, her form, remoulded, drawn 
In gracefuller curves against the leaden sky. 
The wind, which came in wet gusts from the sea, 
Tore at her skirts and wrappings, and again, 
Tugging with baffled malice at the flag, — 
The poor, frayed rag whose emblems, once in- 
wrought, 



Woman-o-thc-Watch. 35 

Had wept themselves to whiteness in the storms 
Of forty years, — howled yet intent to drown 
All voices save its own. Yet still her tones 
Upswelled, defiant with their new-found strength ; 
Her blood coursed quickly and the breath of youth 
Came to her lips, and so the melody 
Bore forth the words of that old, tender song, 
Like the triumphant cry of him who fights 
And conquers all : 

" Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, the wind is droning 

And sighing sadly among the shrouds : 
Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, the timbers groaning 
Sound i' the air like a spirit moaning 
Under the gray of the angry clouds. 

Let timbers groan, 

And spirits moan, 

But, sweet-heart, sweet ! 

Tho' time fly fleet 

Thou art mine, love, thou art mine ! " 

The strain rose glorified as though it held 
A love outlasting death, and backward hurled 
Defiance to the moth and rust of time ! 
Rose as that wondrous cry, triumphant, yet 
So tender, which of old broke on the ears 
Of Thracian women as they looked upon 
The trunkless head of Orpheus, rushing on 
Adown the tide of Hebrus, — that wild cry : 
" Eurydice, Eurydice, my own ! " 
Then, as she finished, all her new-found fire 
Faded and sank as sank the setting sun ; 



36 Woman-0-the- Watth. 

And I turned sadly. And the woman stood 
There in the deep'ning twilight. 

Now the wind 
Rose to a gale, and ere, with hasten'd steps, 
I reached the nearer edges of the town, 
Swirled the dry sand in circles, and anon 
Broke 'round the angles into wails of woe ; 
Yet once — but for a moment — bore along. 
As it had been the fragment of a song. 
Sung in the rhythm of another sphere, 
A dying cadence, sad as falling leaves : 

"Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, — " 

And then the mad wind veered. 
And I heard nothing save its own wild chords 
And the low sobs of the eternal sea. 



MAGDALENE. 
I. 

T^HERE is a headland that o'erlooks the West 

And on its forehead at each set of sun 
Takes the warm farewell kisses of the day. 
A windmill, too, with empty arms that plead 
In desolation, widowed of the wind ; 
And long unused stones, grown granulous, 
As though the petulance of age and dearth 
Cankered their disposition. 

Half adown 
The sloping hillside, walled from careless feet 
And all the mild mutations of the field. 
Stands in its sanctity a little plot 
Set off forever to the silent dead, — 
The beautiful, wise dead, — and here in peace 
Sleep generations dreaming of the sun, — 
The footsore travellers of the island town 
Who rest and wait the morrow. 

Faring once 
Across the headland, down the hillside, I 
Came to this warm God's acre, and drew near, 
Reading, as one who cons remembered lore, 
The brief mfemorials cut in cumbering stone, 
37 



38 Magdalene. 

The names of men revered and women loved, 

Of children broken even as unoped buds 

From stems that never healed them of the hurt, 

Of kindred honored and friends gone before. 

The headstones stood like sculptured sentinels 

Anticipant in posture. One there was. 

Partly in shadow of the loving grass, 

Which drew my gaze by its elusive spell 

And struck me into wonder. Over half 

The legend-bearing stone the moss had grown. 

Weaving a green, impenetrable veil, 

And lichen, closer clinging than doth cling 

Love's lips to lips that falter a farewell, 

Covered it deeper into mystery. 

So stood the tablet, bearing to the light 

One half a history, while the shrouding bloom 

Of reticent nature blotted out the rest. 

I read a name, Honoria. To the right 

A fair sunlit inscription. To the left 

Naught but the masking greenery. 



II. 



So I came 
And knelt before the cryptic stone, and bent 
The sunburnt grasses back, and read the clear 
Uncovered story of the sleeper : 

" Here 
Lies one whose hands were wrought to sacrifice 
She visited the poor ; she served the sick ; 
She did the Christ's work in a weary world." 



Magdalene. 39 

Then I, with heart that knew the weight of te^rs 
And ever a haunting sense of Hfe's strange coil, 
With mine own soul communed : " In very truth 
This woman was as one elect of God." 
And yet the moss-grown riddle was unread ; 
What message 'neath that mantle should I find ? 
Wherefore this mutilated epitaph, 
This tribute marred of half its meaning, blurred 
To imperfection by the touch of Time ? 

I stooped and painfully sought how to force 
The moss and lichen from their stony soil ; 
I clave the uprooted tendrils, piece by piece. 
And tore the green delights whose cool caress 
Lay like a storied palimpsest. Yet still 
Those firm fond lingers of a dryad maid 
Clung to the stone as love to life, and I 
Won with hard toil a letter, then a word, 
Wringing from weeping Nature what she held 
In sacred trust of secrecy, and so 
Filching a sentence from her shielding hand 
In characters tear-stained to darker hue, — 
The record of a maimed life : 

"She loved 
Nor well nor wisely, and fell off apace, 
And lived, alas ! unfaithful to her vows." 

III. 

Over the headland grieved the cadenced wind. 
And fell among the grasses, and died off ; 
A little ghost of perfume from a rose 



40 Magdalene. 

That nestled to the slielter of the mounds, 
Touched me like spiritual fingers. 

May not, then. 
The sense of human justice be appeased, 
That thus it graves a frailty into stone ? 
Honoria, that hast ministered to need 
And heard the low voice of the Nazarene, 
Why has thy brother blazoned here thy sin ? 
For this thy tomb thy noble deeds alone 
Were fitting record. Nature's mercy knows 
More than man's rigor dreams of, and has woven 
Her careful web o'er his impeachment ; ay, 
Even in thy fall, Honoria, thou hast found 
The kiss of God upon thy ruined brow. 

I climbed the hillside where the windmill stands 
With pleading arms ; no sails, lateen and lank. 
Shall ever again entice the breeze to sing 
Light-hearted at its work ; and yet I thought 
There came a whispered promise on the air 
That loitered mid the field flowers, voluble : 
" Much is forgiven, for she loved much." 

And all the warm gold of the setting sun 
Hallowed the headland that o'erlooks the West. 
Nantucket. 



D 



THE WOOD ROBIN. 

|EEP in the hooded aisles, 
Green-gloomed recesses, 
Where solitude beguiles 
My mobled grief to smiles, 
And half expresses 
Dreams of song-music mystically sung ; 
As one who bows to share 
The benison of prayer, 
My soul confesses 
Madness in melody like fragrance flung 
Fair over bloomy miles. 

What art thou that canst bring 

Such sweet nepenthe. 
That I, who hear thee sing. 
Elated, seem to wing 

To Him who sent thee, 
Far thro' the luminate and spacious sky ? 
How from thy dulcet throat 
Distillest thou the note 
Delight hath lent thee 
To ravish hearts till lips forget to sigh. 
Lost in thy carolling? 
41 



42 TJie Wood Robin. 

From collied depths of trees, 

In rhythmic motion, 
Thy quavering gospel frees 
Lays liquid as the seas 
Sing to the ocean — 
Or leaves list in the whisper of the rain. 
Messiah of the sky ! 
Incarnate Rhapsody ! 
In thy devotion. 
Like Love's breath breathed across the lips of Pain, 
Song shudders down the breeze. 

Brother of Philomel, 

Impassioned singer, 
In thy full-throated swell 
Such rest and rapture dwell 
That joy, Joy-bringer, 
Throbs thro' the threnody of weary years. 
A-tremble down the green 
Of married dusk and sheen 
Thy wood-notes linger 
In cadences whose laughter breaks to tears. 
Forth faltering " Farewell." 



SERVUS SERVORUM DEI. 

(from a picture.) 

A SCENT of olive faltered in the air, 

And Era Anselmo, with his well-fed lip 
Drawn up in contemplation, felt his brow 
And pondered o'er his cards ; his brother there 
Had thrown an ace, and smiling even now 
As though he held the game, placed hand on hip 
And half winked at Anselmo. 

These two sat 
Within the monastery garden, snug 
And comfortable, with a flask of wine 
And fruit upon a salver at their hand, — 
Era Bartolomeo, lean and featured fine, 
And Era Anselmo, sensuously fat, 
While on the breeze, as from a distant land, 
A dreamful voice of bells hung rapturously 
And broke to splintered music 'mid the boughs 
That bended South and seemed intent to hug 
The sun-soaked coping of the garden wall. 
'' Brother, I played an ace." The holy vows 
Of Bartolomeo had not hurt his love 
Of winning hands at cards. " Oh, is that all ?" 
43 



44 Servus Servorum Dei. 

Anselmo laughed, " I'll cover it with this, 
The diamond is the trump, I think, you said." 

And ere he ceased to speak, a haggard man 
Peered through the fretted gate, — a man above 
Whose brow were lines of toil, and whose bent back, 
Grown callous by long journeyings, seemed wed 
To the hard angles of his cumbrous pack. 
A child was with him whose bewildered eyes 
Held that within them which in time should fan 
A man's heart into flame, but now there dwelt 
Naught there but sadness and the light to seize 
The rainbows hid in tears. These two had felt 
Hard want together, and their postures plead 
More eloquently than all spoken words. 
Then from his pack the wayworn peddler drew 
Some crucifixes carved in olive wood 
And strung with chains of -cunning handiwork, 
And holding out his wares, in reverence stood 
And begged the monks to purchase : " May it 

please, 
I have sold naught to-day." Anselmo threw 
An angry glance, and with impatient jerk 
Of his shaved head, ordered the man away. 
The while the child looked wonderingly and wept 
To see the sacred emblems sadly placed 
Again within the pack : " Naught, naught to-day," 
She murmured, and they passed adown the road. — 

" I threw an ace," Fra Bartolomeo said. — 
The echoes of receding footsteps chased 



Serviis Scri'onun Dei. 45 

Each other into distance, — steps that strode 

And steps that pattered, — man and child who kept 

Together on their weary way. And so 

The image of the dying Christ passed, too, 

And in the dusty highway disappeared. 

Then mid the whispering leaves a note of woe 

Seemed mingled with the chimes, and ever through 

The music of the vespers wove a sigh. 

" I threw an ace," Fra Bartolomeo said ; 

And Fra Anselmo answered : " Yes, and I 

Have thrown a diamond, 't is the trump that wins 

(Whether the cards be spotted black or red). 

Most of the games played in this world of sins." 

And once again a sob was in the bells : 
Fra Bartolomeo sipped his wine and smiled. 
The sun was setting, and the East grew wan 
As one whose pallor hasting death foretells. 
Anselmo dealt his cards. — The sad-eyed child, — 
The bended man, — the broken Christ — were gone. 



THE SEA. 

T LLIMITABLE Brahman of the Earth ! 

Great Self to which the World-Soul gravitates ! 
Thou dost contain all essences, enfold 
All secrets in the hollows of thy heart 
Where bide unending love, — preventing law. 
Teach me but half the knowledge hid in thee, 
But half the peace within thy silent cells, 
And I shall know my godhead, as I know 
Here for a little while my sad humanity. 



46 



AN ANSWER. 

T QUESTIONED : Why is evil on the Earth ? 

A sage for answer struck a chord, and lo ! 
I found the harmony of little worth 

To teach my soul the truth it longed to know. 

He struck again ; a saddened music, rife 
With wisdom, in my ear an answer poured : 

Sin is the jarring semitone of life^ — 
The needed minor in a perfect chord. 



47 



ARS LOQUITUR. 

T AM the means ; they do degrade me most 
Who make of me the end of life's desire ; 
I do interpret Beauty, but am not 
That Beauty's self ; I ever bend to hear 
Divine Imagination's high commands, 
Obeying that which is immutable. 
They serve me best whose gaze transcends my law, 
And know me least who wear me as a gyve. 
I am the Living God of little men, — 
The tool of great men I. 



48 



WINTER RAIN. 

T IKE driven smoke the rain among the trees 

Slants silently to find the sodden grass, 
There is a living shudder in the breeze 

And every shrub an icy vesture has ; 

No shape of loveliness but, ere it pass, 
Doth turn and thrill me with immortal eyes ; 

No voice but stills its song to sigh "Alas ! " 
No cloud but blots the blue of naked skies. 
While I stand mute and mourn a vanished Paradise 

Summer, that once within thy scented lap 
Pillowed my head, as on a daisied hill 

We sat together, thou and I, mayhap 

Too much enamoured of each other's will, 
Why hast thou left me, desolate and chill. 

To fashion ghosts upon the viewless air? 

Why should more favored suitors have their fill 

Of joy and sunlight, while my biiter fare 

Brings hunger to my soul and to my heart despair? 

Is it that flesh grows gross in tasting joy, — 
That Pain's sword gives the accolade divine? 

Is it that sorrow mingles its alloy 

To touch men's gilded lives to issues fine ? 
Ah ! that the seeker for life's glorious wine 
4 49 



50 Winter Rain. 

Must rend each pulsing heart from which it flows ; 

Ah ! that the working out of love's design 
Should crush the perfume from each velvet rose, 
And rudely wake the soul from Summer's soft 
repose. 

Yet hark ! the liquid whisper of the rain 

Is riven by a song that high and higher 
Soars and fades faintly till the rare refrain 

Seems of its own soft rapture to expire. 

Is it pale Winter singing to the lyre 
Of barren branches and ungarneped sheaves ? 

Is it the hymning of a vernal choir, — 
The immortal spirits of the unborn leaves ? 
I know not, yet my inner sense the song receives. 



PH^DRA {Loquitur). 

T TNLOOSE the triple serpents at my throat 

And let me bare my bosom to the night ; 
Then leave me, ye whose blood is held in leash 
To do a matron's bidding, ye unstained 
Troezinian women, with white horror writ 
Stark in your bended brows ! 

T may not tell 
What question seeks an answer in my soul, 
Seeing I am half human at the best. 
And stung by loves that suck the breasts of Fear. 
Look, where the sleeve falls open, how my arm 
Borrows new pallor from the impassioned moon,- 
Herself a borrower, bankrupt e'en as 1 
When light and love must be repaid in kind. 
May I not follow, with unsandaled feet, 
The scented wood-ways leading to bowered joy, 
And sate mine eyes, though all my body die 
Of baulked desire, whereat the sad gods frown ? 
I seek Hippolytus, and though he slay, 
Still will I seek him, still from 'venging heaven 
Braving the bolts ye prate of. 

Back, I pray ; 
Give me a little air upon my eyes. 
Upon my throbbing brows the night's caress ; 
Go ye, and win your lords to softer ways : 
For me Delight is married to Despair, 
And I woo both within the arms of Death. 
51 



AN IONIAN FRIEZE. 

TTORSES rampant and curbed, compactly close, 
With polished hooves that quiver from the 
earth. 
And mane-enfringed necks, whose rondure shows 

In silhouette against the pale sky's girth. 
Beneath chaste marble, jewelled of chrysolite, 

A gracile girl, with fillet-girdled hair. 
Stands half revealed through folds of shimmering 
white, 

Her carmine lips wed to a silver flute, 

As though their budding beauty to transmute 

To music dying off along the air. 
In sage processional pass bearded priests, 

And acolytes with pink and boyish limbs. 

Chanting to all the gods strange bardic hymns, 
Less tuned to sacrifice than fit for feasts. 
And over all the antique light, the old 

Divine perfection, the lost art which drapes 

In fairest majesty heroic shapes 
Enwrought upon a field of beaten gold. 



52 



A DREAMER. 

T_T E loved the Morning with her lips a-cold, 

He drank large wisdom at Noon's nippled 
breast, 
And, like a later Jason, sought his gold 

Among the fleeces of the winnowed West. 
Through days divinely blent of love and light, 

By reedy runnels he was wont to sit, 
Till broke upon his sense-enraptured sight 

The Everlasting Poet's epic, writ 
In stars upon the placid forehead of the Night. 

He loved to feel the pulses of the Spring, 

Thrilling with life that struggled to the sun, — 
To list the message that the blossoms bring 

And count the roses as a guerdon won. 
Within the Summer's deep blood-tinctured heart. 

To squander days beneath the murmurous trees, 
Till through his dreams the cunning hand of Art 

Inwrought the splendor of such fantasies, 
That Earth, which spake of God, became His 
counterpart. 

Fain were his feet to follow vagrant ways 
When resinous odors filled the eager air, 

He loved to wander through the amber haze, 
Across the meadows, to the upland where 
53 



54 -^ Dreamer. 

Sat Autumn pensively amid her sheaves, 
Marking the alchemy which all too soon 

Transmutes to gold the treasure of her leaves, 
In the long season's mellow afternoon, 

And touches naked boughs wherethrough the sad 
wind grieves. 

He was a dreamer, yet he loved his friends ; 

He gained no gold, nor ever garnered care ; 
He strove not to attain ambition's ends, 

Content that other men should do and dare. 
Perhaps he was not noble, yet no fears 

Made up the aftermath of his emprise ; 
For swift success he never bartered tears 

Wrung from the fountains of another's eyes. 
Nor marred the melody Love sings among the 
Spheres. 



COMPENSATION. 

A BOAT went out with the ebbing tide, 
"^^ A-throb with the pulse of the heart of the sea, 
And curtsied low to the rushy shore, 
And dimpled the waves where the stream grew 

wide, 
Then rounded the light on the lower lea ; 
And the boat had never a sail nor oar. 
Nor rudder to temper her destiny. 
And Hope was the name that her gunnel bore, — 
But she came not back to me. 

A ship sailed into the silent West, 
The dearest pride of my heart was she. 
And fair on the sunset's face of gold 
Her tapering spars stood clear confest ; 
And ah ! 't was as sad as sad could be, 
For the days went by and I grew old. 
And night spread over the slumbering sea, 
But my ship vvas forgot as a tale that is told, 
Nor ever sailed back to me. 

I gave a song to the listening air, 

It trembled aloft with a new delight, 

And bore, in the voice of a strange, sweet bird, 

A measure of joy that was half despair ; 

55 



56 Compensatioji. 

And the song was a part of my soul, my might, 
My innermost thought and tenderest word, 
But it sank to a moan and was silenced quite. 
Like memoried melodies long since heard, — 
Lost stars in a starless night. 

A woman fair with the grace that clings 

To moonlit eyes and sun-kissed head, 

Leaned low and lightly spake to me, 

Till my man's heart leaped with a sense of wings 

" Thy hope to an unknown land is sped, 

Thy pride is wrecked in a soundless sea. 

And the fragrant flower of song is dead, — 

Lost to the world and lost to thee, — 

But love is left," she said. 



AVE AMERICA ! 

AN ODE. 
I. 

"T^EAR Land, my Mother ! To thy feet I bring 
The amplest measure of a faltering song ; 

Hope's starlike harbinger ! Wherever wrong 
Hath wrought the work of her imagining, 
Wherever men have felt the gall of chains 
And through the dark have whispered Liberty, 

Or women, widowed of divinest dowers. 
Have smiled between their sobs to dream of thee, 
There hast thou given the solace of thy plains, 

The shelter of thy battlemented towers. 
Thy hills are mine, O Land made doubly dear 

By hallowed homes and yet more hallowed 
graves ; 
Thy coasts whose marge perennially doth hear 

The husky murmurs of innumerous waves : 
Thy forests, too, with shades more soft than sleep, 

And sanctities of solitude wherethrough 
Strange beauty, which from alien eyes doth keep 

Her fair perfection, steals in ever new 
And ever growing wonder. Mine thy bowers, 

And all the mellow comfort of thy fields 
57 



58 Ave A nierica ! 

Nourished with sunHght and the breath of flowers 
And aftermath perfumes whose parting yields 

An incense fine as prayer. Could I but pass 
Long days in silence on thy sloping meads, 

Amid the populous rumors of the grass, 

Unrest had grown to graciousness, whereof con- 
tentment breeds. 



II. 



And yet, dear Land, a Nation's vows 

Are graven on thy laurelled brows ; 

For thou wast perfected of fire. 

Fair fruitage of the World's desire, 

Thy mother Justice, War thy sire. 

War when a tyrant's mailed hand 

Sent freedom thrilling through the land ; 

War when again oppression sought 

To dwarf the rights which blood had bought ; 

And War, War, War when Treason's mouth 

Spat poison through the amber South, 

And thy own children struck the blow 

Which, aimed aright, had laid thee low. 

Hark to the bells ! 
The large alarm that onward speeds, 
Forerunner of undying deeds, 
Outrung from spire to spire. 

To touch the mild 
Peace-pipings with heroic ire ! 

How the call swells ! 

Strenuous, wild, 



A7'i' Aiiii-rica ! 59 

Impatient I And the guns, the guns ! 

From Sumter booms 

The signal to thy thousand looms, — 
The summons to thy million sons, 

Dear Country, to put off the ways 

And works of honeyed quietude ; 

To meet the rude 
Awakening with unquickened breath ; 

And with unflinching gaze 
To look into the sodden eyes of death. 
See the battalions splendidly sweeping 

r3own from the North ! 

With unwavering lines, coming forth 
To bring sunlight of day 
To the marshes where Treason is stealthily creeping, 
Black in a habit of gray. 



III. 



But ah ! the sons who at their mother's feet 
Kissed Death's pale lips and knew their joy com- 
plete ! 

Ah ! thou supreme civilian, tender, wise, 
With fair j)eace-offerings in thy rugged hands, 

And such divine forgiveness in thy eyes 
As knows no counterpart in all the storied lands ! 

The world's vast harmony by thy devotion 
Is made complete; and through its concords ring 

The notes of thy fair life, in ordered motion, 
Like melody from some earth-nurtured spring. 

Or streams that in the throbbing heart of ocean 



6o Ave A mcrica ! 

Flow on forever and forever sing. 

From thee humanity in every clime 
A deeper love of human freedom gains, 
While rings the echo of the falling chains 

Struck off by thee and made by thee sublime. 
x\nd as o'er some imperishable bower 

The gentle hand of brotherhood might crave 
Love's benediction tenderly to shower, 

So were I -fain, strong leader of the brave, 
To fling the fragrance of this fading flower. 

Across the fadeless verdure of thy grave. 



IV. 



Rare is the recompense of mighty deeds, 
And high the heritage of lofty souls; 

And tho' the memory of the past recedes 

Into the mist of unremembering years, — 
Tho' Time's wheel rolls 

Swift on its axle, scorning human tears 

And men's sad laughter, — yet the spirit lives 

Which makes immortal all great labor done. 
All noble thought translated into act. 

And ever gives, 

Finer than fable, the undying fact 

Which lies behind each radiant victory won. 
And thou, my Mother, with eternal youth 
Set like a pearl above thy unruffled brows, 

Art grown more fair that thou awhile didst feel 

The bite of steel, 



Ave A merica ! 6 1 

And in the darkest of thy days wore truth, 
The chiefest jewel in thy diadem. 

No further need thy fervor to arouse, 
For thou art victress and the unpriced gem 

Of Uberty is thine, 

And all the graces that in perfect-statured wo- 
manhood combine. 
I see thee now, resplendent, prodigal. 

With royal opulence of field and mine 
Poured in thy broad lap ; with thy granaries all 

Bursting to hold the gifts of generous earth ; 

I mark thy mellow fruitage, thy red wine, 
Sun-tinctured in a million purple hearts ; 

The song of comfort that doth mock at dearth ; 
I hear the hum which from unnumbered marts 
Bruits of thy commerce circling land and sea, — 
A nation's life-blood pulsing endlessly ; 

I hear the clack of laboring looms, and long 

Listen elated to the shuttle's song ; 
Before the crescent sickles of the free 

A continent's fair harvest bows, and shrill. 
Unceasing invocations speed the flight 
Of tireless messengers, to carry art 
To regions that but late have seen the light, 

Through nerves which thrill 
To bear the deep pulsations of a heart 

Which falters not, companioned with a never- 
faltering will. 
Behold ! great Land, thy majesty, and raise 
In deep-voiced ecstasy a song of praise. 



62 Ave America ! 

V. 

What of the future, O Land of the World's 
aspiration ? 
Land of large symmetries wrought on the prairies' 
broad faces, 
Land ever lulled by the somnolent kiss of the ocean, 
Ever enthralled with the azure-eyed lakes, con- 
summation 
And pride of a continent, deep in whose bosom 
no traces 
Of tyranny ever have marred a glad nation's 
devotion, — 
What may anointed eyes see 
Of the future for thee ? 
Deep are the signs and portents, wide in the skies 

are they glowing ; 
Onward and upward eternally, fleet as thy rivers 
are flowing. 
Speeds thy divinely appointed destiny, ever and 
ever 
Seer and Prophet and Bard, glad in their calling, 
bestowing 
Prophecy, promise, and song, pledge that no 
power shall sever 
Thee from thy glory, dear Land ; us from thy love, 

gentle Mother ; 
Thee from the fervor of hearts welded as brother 

to brother ; 
Us from thy beauty and truth ; thee and thy sons 
from each other. 



Az>e America ! 63 

All hail to thee, Beautiful One ! deep reverenced, 

love of a nation ! 
To thee be the hand horizontal uplifted, in grave 

salutation ; 
In thee are the potencies wrapped, new lights 

springing forth of thy being 
As the stars from the womb of the night. Press 

on, in the vision all-seeing. 
Through darkness and dread and despair, to the 

dawn and the light and the glory. 
Thy 'scutcheon the worth of mankind, thy annals 

humanity's story. 



SONNETS. 



65 



UNCROWNED. 

T OVE looked upon me with immortal eyes, 

And I became a god with heart of flame ; 
Faith, with a woman's lips, pronounced my name 

Full tenderly, entreating, loverwise. 
Each spake unto me in the other's guise ; 

Love said : Believe. Unfaith is true love's shame. 
And like a benison Faith's whisper came : 

Love is the deepest of my mysteries. 

Then I who lacked fine fibre to perceive 
Life's high beatitudes, trailed in the dust 

The chaplet Heaven had placed upon my head ; 
Alas ! in loving I could not believe ; 

I dallied with the courtesan Distrust ; 

I questioned ! Faith and Love together fled. 



67 



KARMA. 

OlRTH and desire and death and birth again. 
The purgatory of a deathless soul, 
Elusive bubbles which forever roll 

Down restless rivers to the moaning main ; 

The seasons open and the seasons wane, 
Eternal bells for dead millenniums toil, 
Karma endures, and lays its weight of dole 

Upon the tablets of the aching brain. 

The deeds of men are eddies in the wave, 

Forever forming fainter, wider rings ; 
Alas ! there is no potency to save, 

Nor for the pain of life a healing balm. 

Oh, for the Buddha's holy chastenings ! 

The blest Nirvana ! The unending calm ! 



68 



EARTH AND NIGHT. 

(paraphrase of WALT WHITMAN.) 

T WALK beneath the tender, growing night, 

Where darkness makes a mystery of the sea. 
Chanting beatitudes, as one made free 
And soaring skyward in ecstatic flight. 
Upon my lips the south wind breathes delight, 
And thro' the slumbering trees pours melody ; 
Press close, bare-bosomed joy, for I am he 
With eyes anointed to diviner sight. 

Still, nodding Night ! that for my solace keepest 
A beauty which no touch of tempest mars ; 
Sad Earth ! that for departed sunset weepest, 
I read a stern evangel in thy scars. 
I am the lover in whose heart thou sleepest, 
O Night ! that hast the largess of the stars. 



69 



SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. 

"\^7'H0 builds on Reason builds upon the sand 
A fabric mortal as the human brain, 

A fetich-temple crumbling 'neath the strain 
Of Love's first touch, and razed at her demand. 
Mind is a function, by Omniscience planned. 

Dull as digestion, earthly-bred as pain ; 

Thought's final triumph is to prove thought vain. 
And logic's life is quenched by logic's hand. 

The Spirit's intuition, strong and pure, 
Alone soars fetterless to realms above, 

Leaping in scorn past reason's bounds, secure 
Where sentient knowledge dies, true life to prove ; 

Emotion, feeling, these alone endure ; 

Thank God ! God is not Intellect, but Love. 



70 



AN EARLY-APRIL MORNING. 

A CROSS the sky the rifted clouds pursue 

Rare shapes en wrought to wonders manifold, 
And robins glance obliquely to behold 
The cawing caravans that speck the blue ; 
Thy jewels are half a frost and half a dew, 
And o'er the earthy stretches of the wold 
A warm caress, from fingers still a-cold, 
Falls like an old song in a cadence new. 

Dear Morning ! with thy maid's hair unconfined 

By virgin fillets of a later spring, 

Risen as from a rounded dream to find 

The world a-riot for a bourgeoning, 

Thy eyes spill sleep and sunlight, while the wind 

Beats blood to blushes with his gusty wing. 



71 



FINIS CORONAT OPUS. 

A MBITION'S finger beckoned and I ran 
"^^ With bleeding feet o'er rugged paths and 

drear, 
Spurning the inward whispers, soft and clear. 
Which said : " In vain ! Thy life is but a span ; 
The grave shall cover all." Still, in the van 
Of human action, I thought soon to rear 
Some mighty monument to vanquished fear, 
— A shaft to mark the triumph of a Man. 

Poor fool ! My gold was lost amid the dross ; 
Hope died within me, and, as one who mourns, 
I bowed before a bitter sense of loss, 
Clinging despairing to the altar's horns, 
And raised my eyes to where, upon the cross, 
In sad reproval, hung a crown of thorns. 



72 



ELECTRA. 

1\ /TY Love too stately is to be but fair, 

Too fair she is for naught but stateliness ; 
She bids me Nay, and yet a silent Yes 

Dwells in the dusk her shadowy eyelids wear. 

My Love's step makes a music in the air, 
Touching the sense with a divine caress. 
And all the rapture of the dawn doth bless 

The light that leaps to life across her hair. 

Her mouth is just the love-couch for a song, 
And 'mid the fragrance of its riven flowers 
Low laughter breaks and trembles close to tears 
Mingled of mirth and melody, as a throng 
Of bird notes wakes to joy the drowsy hours 
And weaves delight through all the grieving 
years. 



73 



BEDTIME. 

A S children, who, through all the sunburnt day, 
Have tossed aside their playthings, one by 
one. 
Ceasing each frolic ere 't were well begun 
To taste the joyance of some newer play. 
When bedtime comes, turn from their games away, 
With little feet too heavy now to run 
And eyes too full of sleep to miss the sun 
Whose beams still on the mother's forehead stay ; 

So we, tired children of the garnered years, 
Grown weary of our toys of gold and place, 
Nor craving uncompanioned days to reap 
The harvest of our half remembered tears. 
Look in the universal mother's face, 

And murmuring : " It is bedtime," fall asleep. 



74 



DECORATION DAY. 

T ET fall the roses gently. It may be 

That in the sunlight of a fairer clime 
They shall rebloom to beauty as sublime 
As this departed flower of chivalry ; 
And ever as the sobbing of the sea, 

Breeze-rippled, breaks to chants of lordlier 

rhyme. 
Silence your dirges, and in martial time 
Let loud-lipped trumpets blazon victory ! 

Yield not to grief the solace of a tear, 

But 'neath the forefront of a spacious sky 

Smile all exultant, as they smiled at fear 
Who dared to do when doing meant to die. 

So best may comrades prove remembrance dear. 
So best be hallowed earth where soldiers lie. 



75 



A SONNET OF SILENCE. 

'T^IPTOE, with finger at her lip, and rare 

Red-rose mouth rounded to a song unsung, 
A mute maid half a-dream her flowers among,- 

Nature, whose love the loves of all men bear, 

Whose eyes the eyes of all men have found fair, 
Feels in the changes on her spirit rung 
The melody of an unspoken tongue, 

The eloquence of silence everywhere. 

Hushed is the poesy of Summer flowers, 
Silent the vast evangel of the stars. 

And Time, whose noiseless fingers tell the hours 

Like beads upon a vestal's rosary. 

Hears voiceless music writ in golden bars, — 

The mirth of moonlight silent on the sea. 



76 



VICTOR HUGO. 

(may 22, 1885.) 

"C* VANGELIST of truth, whose sovereign glance 
Encompassed centuries, and from the fen 
Of passion wrested beauty ; thou whose pen 

Ennobled love and glorified romance ; 

Great champion of liberty, whose lance — 
A beacon to the wavering hearts of men — 
Impaled the false, and ever and again 

Bare death to tyranny and fame to France. 

To thee immortal laurel wreaths belong, 
To us a memory that the world reveres ; 

'T was thine to know the good, to right the wrong 
'T is ours to glean the fruitage of thy years ; 

Thou gav'st to us a gift divine — thy song. 
We give to thee our human tribute— tears. 



77 



WALT WHITMAN. 
(may 31, 1886.) 

13 OLD innovator in the realm of thought ; 

Strong-sinewed Titan, fighting for the right, 
And wresting from the panoplies of night 

The glories that the patient stars have caught 

From an evanished sun ; brave teacher taught 
By Nature's lips to see with Nature's sight. 
And so to shed day's fair, unsullied light 

Upon the work your rugged hands have wrought. 

You stand serene upon your mountain crag, 
Unmindful of the shallow hum which fills 
The valleys with derision. You can wait. 
And waiting, find your own, when prescient Fate 
Shall grant slow justice, and unfurl the flag 
Of Innocency on a thousand hills. 



78 



WALT WHITMAN. 

(march 26, 1892.) 

"n\ ARKNESS and death ? Nay, Pioneer, for thee 
The day of deeper vision has begun ; 
There is no darkness for the central sun 

Nor any death for immortality. 

At last the song of all fair songs that be, 
At last the guerdon of a race well run, 
The upswelling joy to know the victory won, 

The river's rapture when it finds the sea. 

Ah, thou art wrought in an heroic mould. 

The modern man upon whose brow yet stays 
A gleam of glory from the age of gold, — 

A diadem which all the gods have kissed. 
Hail and farewell ! flower of the antique days, — 
Democracy's divine protagonist. 



79 



TO JOHN KEATS. 

T^EEP in the whisp'ring pine whose profile bars 
■^-'^ The moon's white face ; hush'd in the per- 
fumed bowers, 
Where, languid with the breath of sleeping flowers. 

The summer night lies panoplied in stars ; 

High on the mountain crags of brakes and scars, 
A spirit sought to find in poesy's powers 
Some beauty to bedeck time's conquering hours, 

Like roses on the flaming front of Mars. 

Yet still, tho' lovingly, he sought in vain, 

Till nature's blossom bore the bloom of art, — 

Till ecstasy of joy had wedded pain 

In bonds which never hand of man shall part ; 

Then found within the chambers of thy brain 
The sacred fire to light Endymion's heart. 



80 



TO HERBERT SPENCER. 

' I ^HINKER of ages ! probing pregnant deeps 
Of potent science, till your trained eye saw, 
Amid the maze, a unity of law, — 

An ordered motion whose pulse ever keeps 

Its time-beat while the silent cosmos sleeps, 
Calm in its poise ! The glory yours to draw 
From myths of special causes the hid flaw 

That marks them false. Humanity so reaps 

The fruitful harvest that your hands have sown. 
And finds in Force, evolved, dispelled, the trace 

Of that design which, knowing, yet unknown. 
Thrills through a universe from crown to base. 

The fact is ours, — the honor yours alone 
To fling this beacon into trackless space ! 



AN IDLE DAY: 

A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS. 



83 



ONE O CLOCK. 

SALVE. 

LEEP, soft begetter of our fantasies ! 

Inconsequent philosopher of dreams ! 
I give thee greeting as a friend who seems 

To link my spirit to the slumbering trees ; 

Yet farewell for a season ; hours like these 

Bear golden freightage on their hurrying streams, 
— Brave argosies of thought enriched by gleams 

Divinely dowered of deepest mysteries. 

1 am in love with Earth, and find it fair 

To lie within the rondure of her arms 
Beneath a plenitude of stars, caressing 
The moony midnight of her tressed hair. 

And draining from her fruitful lips the blessing 

And guerdon of her immemorial charms. 



85 



TWO O CLOCK. 

HEART OF THE NIGHT. 

OiLENCE, that art the harbinger of thought, 
And Fancy, foster-child of Solitude ; 
Companions of the meadow and the wood, 
Whose cheer my early morning steps have sought ; 
How fair the fabric by your cunning wrought 
Upon my mild and meditative mood, 
The while the unneighbored stars do bend and 
brood 
Above the vasty darkness vision-fraught ! 

Ah ! beating heart of the soft sandaled night ! 
Slow pulse of sad hours orphaned of the sun ! 
Your rhythm is timed to measures of that song 
Which strong seraphic voices roll along, 
From mountain height to towering mountain height, 
Like the proud psean for a victory won. 



86 



THREE O CLOCK. 

PROMISE OF DAWN. 

A POTENCY and promise. Far away 

Gaunt figures grow to being in the mist ; 
A woven wonder of pale amethyst, 
Shot through with filaments of paler gray, 
Spreads like a vestment for the unborn day. 

Trailing imperial skirts where clouds have kissed 
The silence-haunted hills which lean and list 
The utterance of the everlasting Yea. 

Let there be Light ! I seem to hear the cry 
Down all the ample corridors of Night, 

And dark infinitudes of lonesome sky 

Grow voluble with that majestic calling, 
Reverberant echoes ever faintlier falling 

Through leagues of viewless air : L^et there be Light ! 



87 



FOUR O CLOCK. 

DAYBREAK IN THE WOODS. 

NT IGHT falls away and fades along the breeze, 
Lost in the turning of diurnal tides, 
The morning, like a pallid virgin, glides 

In cool seclusion 'mid the spectral trees ; 

And I, more early risen than the bees 

Whose tardy wooing the laburnum chides, 
Am ravished by an undersong that bides 

The lapsing of the leafy harmonies. 

I lift my lips to meet the kiss of Morn, 

Breathing the breath of Day's sweet maiden- 
time. 
And feel within my spirit, loverwise, 
The deep, divine elation sometimes born 
Of strains of music or a far-off chime 
Or love-liglit lambent in a woman's eyes. 



FIVE O CLOCK. 

A WOODLAND POET. 

A LIQUID music wrought of many a trill, 
Light as low laughter o'er a summer lea, 
Pours down the greenwood aisles an ecstasy, — 
Utters its rapture, falters and is still. 
Wood Robin ! Sylvan Poet that dost spill 

Such dear delights through listening leaves ! 

Thou free 
Spendthrift of joy and hoarded melody ! 
What strange love philter hath beguiled thy will ? 

For I do think there live within thy breast 
The faith and fervor of an antique age, 

Tuning thy note, at Beauty's soft behest. 
Our sordid aspiration to assuage. 

And to our dull ears making manifest 
The pulse and passion of our heritage. 



SIX O CLOCK. 

THE FARM-YARD. 

T JNHARROWED by the toiling town's alarm, 
In blest seclusion from the daily fret 
Which avarice and blinded greed beget, 
Bask the broad acres of the peaceful farm ; 
And in its special angle, walled from harm. 

The barn-yard, deep with husks of corn which 

yet 
Smell of the fields and tell of honest sweat, 
Lies in the morning sunshine, wide and warm. 

Here huddled fatlings slumber in the pens. 

While the cocks' shrill defiances outsoar 
The soft staccato of maternal hens ; 

And from the populous tangles of a vine 
Pert sparrows perch upon the stable door ; 
And bright pails foam beneath large-uddered 
kine. 



go 



SEVEN O CLOCK. 

BLENDED VOICES. 

"\J ATURE is full of voices ; some that plead 

And some that sorrow and yet more that 
sing ; 
Forever keeping for my questioning 
A satisfying answer. This frail reed 
Along the marshes whispers of its need ; 
And in the whirring of a sudden wing 
I catch the lilt of love, wherein the sting 
Yet lingers of love's half-forgotten creed. 

I hear a ditty made of woven sighs — 

A heart-break in a cadence ; and again 
The little lisping of a crippled child 
Full of the tender eloquence of pain ; 
And evermore a monotone of mild 
And mellow music born in Paradise. 



91 



EIGHT O CLOCK. 

CLOVER. 

JUST where the maples whisper morning vows 
To the quick runnel with its mimic tides, 
I know a field of clover which divides 
The meadow grasses from the orchard boughs ; 
And there, knee deep, stand contemplative cows, 
With eyes benignant and swift shuddering hides 
And beaded noses and a breath where 'bides 
The garnered sweetness of the scented mows. 

They stand, unmindful of a world of strife 

Wherein men's souls are battered to a lie, 
And hoarded dollars are the goal of life, 

And every mart is tolling Beauty's knell, — 
Where he 's a hero who can cheapest buy, 
And he a god who can the dearest sell. 



92 



NINE O CLOCK. 

WHISPERS OF THE CORN. 

1^7" HAT sunlit spaces ! Is the world asleep, 

Lulled by the murmurous voices of the morn, 
The while amid the serried ranks of corn 

The keen-edged leaves their idle gossip keep ? 

Perhaps it is but fancy that some deep 

And mythic message to my sense is borne, — 
Half a light song, and half a sigh forlorn, 

Like laughter on the lips of them that weep. 

Indeed I know not ; yet within my ears 

Linger such honeyed accents as beteem 

Strange sweetness to the melody of tears. 

And to rejoicing new delights which seem 

The tender lays of long-forgotten years. 

Reechoed softly through a tranquil dream. 



93 



TEN O CLOCK. 

MID-MORN. 

OEAUTY is never wholly lost to sight, 

For though she shrink affrighted at the din, 
Haply her presence still does enter in 

The open doorway of our hearts to light 

Our lives to righteousness. Nor may the might 
Of Mammon or the manacles of sin 
Prevent her perfectness, nor ever win 

The scent from roses or the stars from night. 

So, lying prone along the summer grass, 

I am content with all things ; and the air 

Comes laden with a song, and clouds that pass 
Above me to my soul a promise bear ; 

And every meadow-lark a message has, 
And every meadow flower is a prayer. 



94 



ELEVEN O CLOCK. 

A WAYSIDE SPRING. 

T^HRICE-BLEST Tranquillity that dwellest 
-*■ here ! 

How like a guardian soul with silent wing 
Thou hoverest above this wayside spring 

Outgushing in mellifluence cool and clear ! 

Faring along the dusty road, I near 

The dripping stones whereto wet mosses cling, 
And sit me down in sheer content, and sing, 

And hearken to the far-off chanticleer. 

What art could so have satisfied my whim 
As this half cocoanut ? I take it up 
And dally with anticipation, then 
Dip deep and drink to all wayfaring men 
In liquid ecstasy which wooes the brim 
Of this inimitable drinking cup. 



95 



NOON. 

HALF WAY TO ARCADY. 

' I ""HE faultless fervor of a day in June ; 
An insect-whisper vibrant in the air ; 
The breath of daisies shedding everywhere 

Soft wafture o'er the lids of nodding noon. 

Deep in the listening woods an ancient croon 
Of hermit crickets weaving a fanfare 
Through slender undertones, elusive, rare 

As songs in sleep sung to an antique tune. 

The far-off Sabbath-voice of chiming bells 
A peace evangel murmurs to the heart ; 

A scent, half clover's and half asphodel's, 

Falters through dusks wherein strange n 
dwells ; 

Is it the echo of Pan's pipe which tells 
Its story to the ravished ears of Art ? 



96 



ONE O CLOCK. 

A WILD ROSE. 

^71 rHERE the warm upland melts against the blue, 
An ancient fence, o'er which the lichen 
grows. 
Meets a more ancient wall ; and rare repose 
Dwells in the myriad little sounds which sue 
The aged silences in accents new ; 

And in that sun-soaked angle blooms a rose, 
Whose heart, blood-tinctured by the joy it knows, 
Just forms the chalice for a drop of dew. 

There will I lie and dream and idly wreathe 
The tender grasses till my heart discover 

Somewhat of their content ; and there, beneath 
The vines o'er which pale butterflies do hover, 

I '11 listen while the passionate rose doth breathe 
Her soft love-secrets to her powdered lover. 



97 



TWO O CLOCK. 

ROADWAY DUST. 

A LONG the honest turnpike honest dust 

Keeps its true color, mindless of the fields, — 
Scorning the brighter tints which summer yields, 
Nor aping flowers that bloom because they must ; 
It is a type of individual trust 

In one's own selfhood, — a true force that wields 
The power which moves the world, and ever 
shields 
Man from servility that breeds disgust. 

I '11 bow to genius, every reverence show, 
And sit all meekly at the feet of art, 

Albeit I will not imitate a king, 
Nor strive to be another's counterpart, 
For though 't is great to be an Angelo, 

To be one's self is yet a greater thing ! 



THRFE O CLOCK. 

WHEAT-BILLOWS. 

T^HE ground slopes upward towards a little h i 
Drenched in the sunlight, and within the 
space 
A field of wheat, o'er which the breezes trace 
Tremors of light and shade that throb and thrill 
In billowy undulations, quickening till 
The field lies like a love-enamored face 
Upturned to let the warm caresses chase 
Each other, that the wind may have his will. 

So have I seen a woman luring love 

With quivering silk lips and breath of fire. 

The while across her cheek in colors clear 
The swift blood chased the pallors of desire. 
And strange mistrust her tender bosom clove. 

And half her heart was flame and half was fear. 



99 



FOUR O CLOCK. 

REMEMBRANCE. 

A QUICK commotion in the startled leaves, 
A shudder of the living green ; I know 
It was a bird that winged its flight, although 
I saw no creature. So my soul receives 
Time's fleeting passage as my life it cleaves 
With human happiness or human woe ; 
Such are the memories that come and go, 
The while the sun his dappled patchwork weaves. 

And I, who lean and dream, am half in love 

With things unreal and passion's whitened em- 
bers, 
Embracing shadowy shapes, nor asking why 
A vanished beauty holds a joy above 

All others, as the saddened night remembers 
Dead meteors that have once illumed a sky. 



FIVE O CLOCK. 

ASPIRATION. 

"T^ROWSING beneath the hum of summer bees, 
'^"'^ Marking with half-closed eyes the liberal sky, 

Lulled to soft slumbers by the lullaby 
Of winds grown voluble among the trees, 
My seeking soul, as one who fain would seize 
The passing passion of a song on high, 
Leaps upward with the immemorial cry 
Which God has echoed down the centuries. 

The kindred spirits of the sunburnt day 
Make earth a heaven and existence bliss, — 

Plume with Mercurial wings my feet of clay 
And touch my brows with a celestial kiss. 

Till lips that faltered lisp a loftier lay, 

And from a fairer world bring peace to this 



101 



SIX O CLOCK. 

CLOUD-MAGIC. 

IMAGINATION is the highest truth ; 

And I, upgazing through the spaces clear 

To mark the clouds' caprices, am a seer, 
From Fancy's fabric fashioning uncouth 
Yet faithful images, — such forms, in sooth, 

As tempt to favor while they touch with fear ; 

Misshapen giants with a changeful leer ; 
Nude naiads glorious in perennial youth. 

Then passionate faces yearning towards the West, 
The nostrils palpitant with strange desire, 
A shudder quickening the nether lip, 

Wherefrom the blood dies of its own unrest ; 
Again a sudden change ; a helmless ship ; 
The chaos of the red sun's funeral pyre. 



SEVEN O CLOCK. 

THE BROOK. 

T IGHT-HEARTED babbler of a thousand tales, 
Half sung, half spoken, and in broken trills 
Borne lightly to my ear, thy music fills 
My heart with joy when summer daylight pales, 
And through the murmurous glooms of shadowy 

dales 
Thou bearest whispers from the distant hills ; 

And as the iterant voices of thy rills 
Sing among pebbles, visions of white sails 

That top quaint fishing craft upon the river 
Wherein thou find'st at last thy resting-place. 

Rise up before me and in silence quiver 
Like sudden smiles across a questioning face ; 

Till wider fancy seems to picture thee 

Enfolded, yet still singing, in the sea. 



103 



EIGHT O CLOCK. 

THE TWILIGHTS. 

A LIGHT wind loiters down the wooded ways, 
Bearing the breath of orchards and replete 
With such an essence as alone should greet 
A sense grown fine through many vagrant days. 
A sigh among the slender leafage stays, 

And married lights break into shafts and meet 
Where weary Nature, in her green retreat, 
Upon her lips a hushing finger lays. 

A dying radiance through the thicket gleams. 
The colors of the day are slowly furled, 
A mystery trembles onward silverly, — 
A lily on the bosom of the world, — 
Elusive as the pageantry of dreams 

Or moonlight sleeping on a summer sea. 



104 



NINE O CLOCK. 

PERSPECTIVE. 

T PAUSE upon a mystic borderland 

Wherefrom the visible world seems all besprent 
With flowers of changeful hue and colors blent 

In strange confusion. I do think a band 

Of those Greek heroes who once, hand to hand, 
Fought for the prizes which the gods had sent. 
Sometime their glowing presence must have lent 

To these green aisles where wooded sentries stand. 

How weirdly, through the glooms of yonder tree, 
Wavers the owl's cry, with its minor strains 
Fateful as dirges sung to murdered joy, — 
Sad as the sobs of pale Andromache 

To see her Hector, foul with gory stains, 
Dragged pitilessly 'neath the walls of Troy ! 



105 



TEN O CLOCK. 

FANTASY. 

A S some luxurious beauty of the East, 

Grown languid in the cassia-scented air, 
With narrowed eyes looks through her sultry hair. 
And toys the sweetmeats at a regal feast, 
The while her bodice, from its cords released. 
Stays still a-warm to know her bosom there, — 
So seems the night, with constellations fair, 
Heavy with scents left when the breezes ceased. 

Am I alone ? Is not some spirit here ? 
Across the waiting air there comes a call ; 
High overhead the tasselled branches nod. 
With just a whisper flattering the ear. 

And silence, with its million tongues, fills all 
The woodland spaces with the name of God. 



1 06 



ELEVEN O CLOCK. 

NOCTURNE. 

A NIGHT bird, from the hollow of the dark, 

Beats upward through the pulseless air and 
dies 
Into the mighty mystery of the skies 
That bend, with large imperial brows, to mark 
Earth's slumbering perfectness, mayhap to hark 
Her little breathings as she lightly lies, — 
To-morrow's sunlight prisoned in her eyes, 
And in her heart songs of to-morrow's lark. 

So thoughts which will not wear the yoke of words. 
Fretting the stillness with their whispering wings, 

Take flight more swift and silent than the bird's. 
Into a heaven of vaster fashionings ; 

And unknown beauty all my vision girds. 
And voiceless music through my spirit sings. 



107 



MIDNIGHT. 

VALE. 

/^H ! tender benison of darkness, cast 

^-^^ Upon the throbbing bosom of the earth, — 

Dropt as a mantle over all the mirth 
And madness of the day, — thou ever hast 
A sweet compassion for us, and at last 
A poppied peace ! I gaze upon the girth 
Of heaven, heavy with the rare new birth 
Of beauty crescent through the spaces vast, 

The while the unruffled forehead of the night 
Lifts royally its diadem of stars ; 

Then, as a sleeper fares adown his way 
'Mid dreamy meadows, lying still and white, 

I thread the moonlit lane, pass through the bars. 
And close the record of an idle day. 



A PRIMROSE PATH 



SONGS AND TRIFLES. 



109 



BETWEEN. 

DETWEEN the sea sand and the sea 
The yellow foam flakes lightly lie, 
A very dross of waves, till free 

Quick-kissing breezes surge and sigh, 
And all the laurels on the lea 

Bend low to listen as bends the sky 
Where spaces throb with melody. 

Then foam is wrought to gold, and I, 
Silent, find Heaven surrounding me — 

In gilded fringe — in breeze's sigh ; 
Between the sea sand and the sea 

Where yellow foam flakes lightly lie ; 
Where spaces throb with melody 

Between the skylark and the sky. 

Between the sunset and the sun 

Night slumbers on the sleeping bars, 
And through its curtain, one by one. 

Gleam tender glances of the stars 
Between the sunset and the sun. 
And so between my love's lips lies 

An untold message meant for me ; 
Whether 't will bring me sweet surprise 
Or dole or doubt or Paradise 

Is known alone to destiny. 



1 1 2 Cradle Song. 

Yet, as I wait, a dream of tears 

Between her eyelids and her eyes — 

A mystery of mist — appears. 

That hints of hope and flatters fears, 
And on her lips a shudder of sighs. 
And on her lids a red that dies 
To slumberous shadows that fall and rise, 

Till as I seek some sign to see. 
Between her eyelids and her eyes 

Love lights his lamp and laughs at me. 



CRADLE SONG. 
[from the drama "marie del carmen."] 



S' 



LEEP, my pretty one. 
Sleep, my little one, 
Rose in the garden is blooming so red ; 

Over the flowers the fleet-footed hours 
Dance into dreamland to melody wed 

To the voice of the stream — to a song in a dream. 
Sung low by the brook to its stone-covered bed. 
Sung soft as it goes ; 
And the heart of the rose 
Gives a tremulous leap 
As the melody flows. 
Ah, little one, sleep, 
Sleep. 



Cradle Sottg. 113 

Peace, my little one, 
Peace, my pretty one, 
Lilies bend low to the breath of the breeze ; 

Lithe as a willow, the boat on the billow 
High tosses the spray for the sunlight to tease 

With a kiss and a tear — with a rainbow, a fear. 
For the light is the sun's and the spray is the sea's. 
And the wind o'er the lea 
Breaks to cadences free 
As the waves that release 
The low laugh of the sea. 
My pretty one, peace. 
Peace. 

Joy, my pretty one, 
Joy, my little one. 
Fairies of night from their bright-jewelled cars 
Fling a faint sheen and shimmer on ripples where 
glimmer 
The up-gazing eyes of the down-gazing stars ; 
And the boat, while it glides, sings the song of 
the tides 
As they kiss into languor the sand of the bars. 
Oh, river flow fleet, 
Ere the melody meet 
The sea's breath to destroy 
What the echoes repeat : 
My little one, joy, 

Joy! 



1 14 Caprice. 



CAPRICE. 

A SUMMER night with perfumed breath 
■** Told love-tales to the listening trees, 
And hedge-row buds, in guise of death. 

Dreamed of the kisses of the bees. 
While, wheeling, circling, faint and far, 

A firefly showed its shimmering spark. 
And, like an evanescent star. 

Painted its life along the dark ; 
And I, who wandered in the lane. 

Grew envious of a thing so free, 
And sighed and gazed and sighed again. 

And cried : " Kind Heaven give to me 
The firefly's liberty." 

My love came tripping down the lane ; 

The boughs bent low to touch her head ; 
The clover never felt the pain 

Of death beneath so light a tread ; 
And ere I knew, the firefly's wings 

Were tangled in her burnished hair, 
The intermittent glimmerings 

Illumining a face more fair ; 
Then I, who felt my heart beat wild 

The love-light in her eyes to see. 
Became capricious as a child, 

And prayed : " Sweet Heaven grant to me 
A like captivity." 



A Serenade. 115 



A SERENADE. 



/^N roses asleep in the starlight, 
^-^ On daisies that dream of the sky, 
The tremor and touch of a far light 

Falls faint through the spaces on high,- 
Falls fair where the tendrils are clinging, 

Lies light where the lilies are flinging 
Perfumes to the winds that are singing 

A song that is born of a sigh. 



II. 



Low brows for a thousand caresses. 

Lithe throat for a season's delight, 
Ah ! spice-scented wonder of tresses 

Dim-shadowed and duskily bright. 
Pale passionate arms that embower 

Light love that endures but an hour, 
Lips pressed like a flower on a flower, 

Eyes dark with the spell of the night. 

in. 

Bitter-sweet though the pang and the pleasure, 
I would rather be bounden than free ; 

Life treadeth a statelier measure 

With the finger of Love on the key ; 



1 1 6 Love Came to Me. 

Pain kisses the rod of the Giver, 
As the ripples in ecstasy quiver 

Where breaks the sad heart of the river 
In the turbulent heart of the sea. 



LOVE CAME TO ME. 

I OVE came to me when I was young ; 
•*— ' He brought me songs, he brought me flowers ; 
Love wooed me lightly, trees among, 
And dallied under scented bowers ; 

And loud he carolled : " Love is King ! " 
For he was riotous as spring 

And careless of the hours, — 
When I was young. 

Love lingered near when I grew old ; 

He brought me light from stars above ; 
And consolations manifold 
He fluted to me like a dove ; 
And love leaned out of Paradise 
And gently kissed my faded eyes 

And whispered : " God is Love," — 
When I grew old. 



Flower <?' the Sea. wj 



FLOWER O' THE SEA. 

A LITTLE maiden debonair 
■**■ With sunshine tangled in her hair, 
Along with me, beside the sea. 
Trod yellow sands, and clapped her hands 
To see the foam come rolling home, — 
Come rolling home right royally. 

She never dreamed that she was fair, 
This little maiden debonair. 
Nor questioned I the reason why 
I found to stray with her alway 
Was veriest joy, — I but a boy 
With small feet brown and bare. 

And once a wave broke high in air. 

Scattering foam flakes everywhere. 

And something bright flashed in the sight 

Of her, my maiden debonair ; 

And when the tide went out, she cried : 

"See, see ; a pearl ! The breakers hurl 

Their gems to land for our delight." 

And so we strayed, my little maid 

And I, beside the sea ; 

And onward sped the silent years, 

And silenter grew we, 

For I was thoughtfuller, and she 

Was not the same to me. 



1 1 8 Flotver o the Sea. 

There grew a wonder in her eyes, — 
My maiden dainty, debonair, — 
And voices tuned to subtler art 
Were voluble within her heart 
And to her soul made questioning ; 
She felt the spell, yet could not tell 
Whence sudden shame so strangely came ; 
Whence hopes and fears and tremulous tears 
And sweet surprise and quivering sighs, — 
Half laughter, — laid on lips that sing. 
She could not tell ; she scarce need care. 
My maiden slender, debonair. 

But I knew well. The child had fled 

And left a woman in her stead : 

My maiden shy and debonair 

Had 'wakened in her Paradise, 

And, fairer grown, had grown more wise, 

Alas ! as wise as fair. 

And as again beside the sea 

We wandered homeward silently, 

I leaned and lightly touched her hair. 

And said : " Sweet maiden debonair, 

A little girl once found a pearl 

Left by the deep mysterious tide, — 

A thing of beauty from the wide 

Unfathoraed sea ; nor faltered she. 

But in her hair the treasure fair 

Set like a dew-drop in a rose. 

And now, my maiden debonair, 



Marguerite. 119 

Your heart has found a gem more rare, — 
A pearl from out the sea of life, — 
Love^ that the flowing tides enclose. 
The child knew not ; the woman knows ; 
And knowledge ever bringeth strife ; 
Yet where the pearl lies, is repose, — 
Repose which I would have you share 
With me, dear maiden debonair." 

She paused a space, then gently drew 
From out her breast a pearl, and said : 
" Forth from the sea it came to me. 
And from my heart it goes to you." 
And lo ! the starlight of the skies 
Lay sleeping in her lifted eyes. 
And on her brow a glory shed. 
And faint across the meadows fell 
The calling of a vesper bell 
That high above sang Love ! and Love ! 
And ah ! my maiden debonair, 
How fair you were ! How passing fair ! 
As through the sand we trod the strand 
And gazed far out to sea. 



MARGUERITE. 

117 AIR Marguerite, the red of parted lips 

Grows deeper, and the glory of thy brow 
More glorious yet, as lowered lids allow 
Swift glances, fleeting, but as sweet as sips 



1 20 The Way d the World. 

Of honey from the hearts of flowers. So now, 
Poised in the halo of the sun that dips 

Behind the empurpled hills, thy presence seems 
The realized perfection of my dreams. 

Sweet, silent Marguerite ! How may I name 

The hundred-tinted shadows of thy hair ? 

Or count the liquid lights of eyes as rare 
As polished pearls beneath white jets of flame. 

Or soft stars scintillant through lambent air 
In the hushed night ? How, seeing thee, proclaim 

The love I fain would bring, a sacrifice 

To offer at the altar of thine eyes ? 

Nay, Marguerite, I cannot ; for the soul 

That reigns transcendent in the dwelling-place 
Of thy fair form, irradiates thy face 

With lustre pure as words writ on the scroll 
Of God's own law. I would not dare erase 

One faintest tracery, although the goal 

Which whispered words of love ensured to me 
Should be an answering whisper felt by thee. 



THE WAY O' THE WORLD. 

"NT ELL and I set out together 

In the spring — the heyday ; 
Nell and I, thro' fickle weather, 
Fared afield where cows at tether 
Waited for the May-day. 



Philosophy-iii-Littlc. 1 2 1 

When the birds were all a-feather 

Nell and I, like true loves, 
Danced thro' sun and summer weather, 
Singing all the while together, 

Scorning thoughts of new loves. 

But when frost had nip't the heather 

And each hill and valley 
Donned its gown of russet leather, 
Nell and Ned went off together, — 

I made love to Sallie. 



PHILOSOPHY-IN-LITTLE. 

A DAY of toil amid the moil 
^^ And muddle of the city, 
I passed in vain and sordid pain 

And worry, more 's the pity ! 
I had no heart for books or art 

Or labor of the scholars. 
So crept to bed, with aching head. 

And dreamed of dust and dollars. 

Upon the lawn, at early dawn, 

A robin fluted sweetly. 
He sang to me so joyfully 

That up I rose all fleetly ; 
Then out I went and all day spent 

Amid the April greening,— 
Came back at night, enamored quite 

Of nature and her meaning. 



122 Cupid and Justice. 



CUPID AND JUSTICE. 

'T^HE little God of Love one day 

While walking chanced to lose his way, 
And being, as the poets say, 

Incapable of seeing, 
Flung himself prone upon the grass, 
To wait until some friend should pass. 
And, as he lay, a comely lass 

Adown the road came fleeing. 

Her face was fair, her temples white. 
And tho' her step was soft and light. 
She too, alas ! had lost her sight, 

And moved a trifle slowly ; 
She too, alas ! had lost her way. 
And, ever going more astray, 
Soon came to where the Love-God lay 

Among the grasses lowly. 

Then Love uprose, with just a trace 
Of mischief on his handsome face, 
And said : " My lady, grant me grace 

That I appear so stupid ; 
But may I beg to know your name ? " 
"I am called Justice," said the dame, 
Then blushed, as low his answer came : 

"And, madam, / am Cupid." 



A Rondeau of Vassar. 123 

He lisped sweet nothings in her ear, 

She frowned, yet could not choose but hear ; 

And tho' she strove to look severe, 

Her heart was in a flurry. 
Too late they learned the Fates designed 
They nevermore their way should find, 
For neither knew the other blind, 

And both were in a hurry. 



A RONDEAU OF VASSAR. 

(~\^, Vassar girl, who fain would rise 
^"^^ Superior to Love's charming lies ; 
You who prefer the themes that be 
Modelled on Kant's philosophy ; 
Potential ballots in your eyes, 

And bridge of nose, judicial, wise — 
In fact a very Bridge of Size 
And intellectuality. 
Oh, Vassar girl ! 

You 're fair, yet from you Cupid flies 

With cramps as though he 'd dined on pies ; 

For, suaviter in modo, he 

Finds you too for titer itt re, 
And so to lesser culture hies. 
Oh, Vassar girl ! 



124 Ballade to a Bookman. 



EVOLUTION OF THE POET. 

"\'\ /"HEN dryads lived and sought to bring 

Ladona to the sparkling spring 
Where shaggy Pan was wont to sit 
And pipe his ditties, poets writ 
With pens plucked from the swelling wing 
Of Pegasus, nor felt the sting 
Hid in the average critic's fling : 
Poeta nascitur nan fit. 
When dryads lived. 

But nowadays the proper thing 
\^ first to get within the ring, 
And, having made a single hit, 
An ounce of sense, — a grain of wit, — 
Will do the rest ; no need to sing 
" When dryads lived." 



BALLADE TO A BOOKMAN. 

/CROTCHETY delver in books, 

^-^ Hater of all that is new, 

Seeker of cosiest nooks 

Known to the favorite few, 
Why should you ever ask who 

Fateward defiance hath hurled ? 
Delver in books it is you — 

You who have conquered the world. 



A Rondeau in Reply. 125 

Snuffy old fellow, whose looks 

Hint of a wig and a queue, 
Scorning the cates of the cooks 

For a pewter of ale and a stew. 

Why should you ever be blue. 
Seeing that runnels have purled, 

Since the beginning, for you — 
You who have conquered the world ? 

Intim Ue friend of Home Tooke's, 
Chum of the Wandering Jew, 

Rating reformers as " crooks " 
And lovers as enfants perdus, 
Why should you ever pursue 

Ways of the folk who are swirled 
Into the popular view — 

You who have conquered the world ? 

ENVOI. 

Dream, as you ruminate through 
Smoke into canopies curled ; 

Dream, for you 've nothing to do — 
You who have conquered the world. 



I 



A RONDEAU IN REPLY. 

N fallow fields I long to lie — 
A bookman lost in Arcady ; 
Or, steeped in grasses to the knees, 
To follow fast where fancy flees ; 



126 Ballade. 

Though musty lore and legend die, 
I 'd give my conquered world to sigh 
An answer to the lullaby 

Hot-hummed by honey-loaden bees 
In fallow fields. 

A-dream 'neath circumambient sky, 
To list the crow's remoter cry, 

The while the love-begetting breeze 
Flutters the leafy hearts of trees 
And turns the heads of foolish rye 
In fallow fields. 



BALLADE. 

1\ /r AIDEN, if within thy breast 

Lurks the trust that thou shalt seize 

From life's love the purest, best, 
Quafiing nectar, while the lees 
Mingle not ; upon thy knees 

Quickly fall for guidance. Never 

Dally with false dreams that please ; 

Love and wine deceive us ever. 

Youth, who, at the soft behest 
Of the ruddy wine-cup, ease 

And the sense of being blest 
Seekest, know thy destinies 
But await fulfilment ; these 

Shall not stay though thou be clever ; 



Rondeau. 127 

Follows fate where fortune flees ; 
Love and wine deceive us ever. 

Lover, who, upon the crest 

Of the waves of Paphian seas, 
Think'st to find ecstatic rest 

Mid love's charms and panoplies, 

Drown thy dreams in medias res ; 
Happiness waits on endeavor ; 

Joys unearned are miseries ; 
Love and wine deceive us ever. 

ENVOI. 

Youths and maids of all degrees, 

Heads must learn though hearts should sever ; 
Butterflies have stings of bees ; 

Love and wine deceive us ever. 



RONDEAU. 

T N days of old, when gods divine 

Quaffed potent draughts of golden wine 
From crystal goblets, and in glee 
Sported with dolphins in the sea. 
Or strayed beneath the oak and pine, 

The poet but waited for a sign. 
And through his pen the immortal Nine 
Spake all delicious things that be 
In days of old. 



128 Rondeau. 

But now the gods have grown so fine 
They keep at home, and not a line 
The muses give to you and me ; 
But, having come to drinking tea, 
Lose brilliance, and so only shine 
In days of old. 

THE END. 



